Bisbee daily review. [volume] (Bisbee, Ariz.) 1901-1971, 1917-12-12
WHAT GERMANS THINK.
kansas City Starr

WHAi SGhmf>No
kansas City Starr
1t is hard for Americans understand the German
There is widespread disposition believe that only
few fanatics believe in of conquest Public sent
ment in general we assume be reasonable.
For this reason one Of the most useful III
government has published in the war is the book Coz
quest and Kultur" by Wallace Notestein and Elmer
Stall of the University Minnesota. is ext-aord
nary compilation. Passages quoted from sonethn
like two hundred German writer's. public men, colleg
professors clergymen clarifying successful war tn
highest expression of nations life The compiers sa
dearth material They had collected abou
three times as much material used IAN
could find passages of similar import long the
had library facilities" the feeling in Gel
many they say:
The German writer's whom the compiIers have
read have sought again and again to fan the flame
of German hatred by quoting English differences
of similar character three English utterances in
ALL and only of them comparable to the passages
in this collection. OF French jingostic utterances
German writer's have much to and little to quote
They talk with greater vagueness of the ambitions
of America.
Consider this passage printed in 1913, the year be
fore the war; in the Jungdeutschand- Post, week.,
paper for young people, and imagine anything like it ap
pearing say, in the YOUTHS Companion:
War is the noblest and hottest expression Of hui
activity. For us, too, the glad, great hour of
battle will strike Still and deep in the German heart
live the joy battle the longing for it. Let
us ridicule the utmost the old in breaches
who fear war and deplore it cruel and revolving.
No; is beautiful.
Here is passage from a book by Adolf Lasson. pro
of philosophy in the University of Berlin;
trast with teachings of William James Harvard
or of John Dewey of Columbia:
is alone that which it already has that state
defends by war; it is that which, as yet
it has not but regards necessary gain from the
1t is absurd inveigh against OF
quest; point of the object of the
conquest The state which realizes the highest form
of culture of the realize itself only by the
destruction of which, logically only
be brought about by violence.
Two years before the outbreak of the war a German
officer General Keim in Der Tag the pecessy
of using offensive warfare of state policy 1t
is possible imagine American officer like General
Wood, for instance, talking in this strain:
The will go hand in hand with the
resolution to act the offensive without any
scruples We only depore the fact that it has
become official and parliamentary usage speak
clusively of Germany's defense" for which she
ought to be prepared. No; Germany ough; % be-
armed for attack exactly in 1870.
Or contrast this utterance of the kaiser at the laying
of cornerstone of Berlin church With the uterances
of any American president from Washington down.
II is the soldier and the army, not parliamentary
majorities and votes, that have welded the German
empire together My confidence upon the army.
Evidently Germany has been living in different
world from for the last generation 1t is world
in which the state has been exalted above law;
world in which might makes right a national scale.
That is why the German empire has become menace
to all other peoples. That is why the cannot stop
until the German people have learned that these political
theories pay and that in the international sphere
as well in private life morality is the best policy.