Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-05-21
GERMANY IS
MUCH CHANGED
BY IRWIN S. COBB

We have got to remember that the
Germany with which we have broken
is not the Germany of Heine and
Goethe and Haeckel and Beethoven;
not the Germany that gave us Steu-
ben in the Revolutionary war, rrI
Sigel and Schurz in the Civil war;
not the Germany of the sentimental,
chivalrous, lovable Saxon, or yet
of the music-loving home-loving
Bavarian; not the Germany that was
the birthplace of the kindly, honor
able, industrious, patriotic German
speaking neighbor round the corner
from you-but the fanatical, tryran-
nical, power-mad, blood -and-iron
Prussianized Germany of Bismarck
and Won Bernhard, of the Crown
Prince and the Junkers-that pas
sionate Prussianized Germany which
for forty years through the instru-
mentality of its ruling ciasses-not
necessarily its Kaiser. but it's real
ruling classes-has been jealously
striving to pervert every native ounce
of its scientific and it's inventive and
its creative genius out of the paths
of progress and civilization and to
JOill II iillo lll6 STOONeS Ol lUe RFGaI-
este autocratic machine, the great
est organism for killing off human
beings, the greatest engine of man
hegotten and misdirected efficiency
that was ever created in the world
Because we have an admiration for
| one of these two Germanys is no
more a reason why we should abate
| our Indignation and our detestation
for the other Germany than that be-
cause a man loves CHEEKY blaze
upon his hearthstone he should re-
fuse to fight forest fire.
We have got to remember another
thing. If our oversee observations of
/ this war abroad have taught us any
| thing, they should have taught us
| that the German army-and when
| say army | mean in this case, not it's
men but its officers, since in the Ger
man army the officers are essentially
the brain and the power and the mo-
! tive force directing the unthinking,
blindly obedient mass beneath them
that the German army is not an
army of good sportsmen. And that,
take 1T, is an even more important
! consideration upon the field of bat
tie than it is upon the athletic field.
Asthe saying goes, the Germans don't
play the game. 1t is as inconceivable
to imagine German officers going in
| for baseball or football or cricket as
it is to imagine American volunteers
marching the goose step.
The Germans are not an outdoor
race; they are not given to playing
outdoor sports and abiding by the
rules of those sports, as Englishmen
and as Americans are. And in war
that biggest of all outdoor games
it stands proved against them that
they do not play according to the
rules, except they be rules of their
own making. The German is q greedy
winner and he is bad loser--a most
. remarkably bad loser. Good sports
men would not have broken Belgium
into bloody bits because Belgium
stood between them and their goal;
good sportsmen would not have sung
the Hymn of Hate, or made "Gott
Strafe England" their battle cry;
good sportsmen would not have shot
Edith CaVell or sunk the Lusitania
Good sportsmen would not have
packed the helpless men and boys of
conquered and a PROSTATE land off
as captives into an enforced servitude
worse than African slavery; would
not wantonly have wasted La Fere
and Chauny and Ham. and a hundred
other French towns, as they did last
month, for no conceivable reason
than that they must surrender these
towns back into the hand of the
enemy; would not, while ostensibly
at peace with us, have plotted to de-
stroy our industrial plants and to
plant the seeds of sedtion among
our foreign born citizens, and to dis
member our country, parceling it out
to a. brown race in Mexico and a yell
low race in Japan. Good sports do
not do these things, and Germany did
all of them. That means something.
Courtesy of the Saturday Evening
most