Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1917-08-02
'KULTUR" AS UNDERSTOOD BY
PRUSSIA.

II would be we'll, perhaps, to pay
heed to the warning to avoid using
court plaster bought from peddlers.
Since the outbreak of the present
war there have been frequent ref
erences in the English and American
press to German "kultur" and many
attempts to reconcile it with culture
as the word is understood in western
democracies. German kultur en-
braces more than the systematic re-
finement and improvement of the
intellect; it is a means to the trium-
phant domination of an infinite num-
ber of privileged mortals who shall
occupy before the unkultured the
proud positions as supermen.
For more than a century German
philosophers have taught that this
supreme kultur can be secured only
through the systematic subjugation,
even to slavery, of the so-called baser
races. Frederick August Wolf is
recognized authority in Prussia on
kultur. Emerson is at times referred
to by the German philosopher as the
wolf Of America" Wolf came be-
fore Nietzsche. He was the first to
demonstrate that, from the German
point of view, slavery is necessary to
kultur. It will come as a shock to
the esthetic elite of Americas ad-
vanced thought societies to learn that
their beloved lunatic, the impossible
Nietzsche, was a professed apostle Of
that creed of Wolf, the enslavement
of the masses for the intellectual free
dom of the elite; It is frightful, but it
is nevertheless true, however fright
full.
In one of his labored treatises
Wolf advances bodily the theory that
slavery is necessary to kultur and
proceeds with the following explana-
tion:
ut may be that this revelation
will fill us with fright; but fright,
that feeling is the almost necessary
effect of all knowledge that ceases
to be superficial. Nature remains
something frightful, even when 1t
creates the most beautiful forms. The
human race is constituted In such a
way that kultur, in its triumphant
march, profits only an infinite num-
ber of privilege mortals; and it is
necessary, II one desires to attain
the full expansion Of kultur, that the
masses shall remain slaves. And II
1t is true to say that the Greek states
perished through slavery, perhaps 1t
is still more true to say that, through
lack Of slavery, we shall perish"
When one reads and reflects on
the philosophy of this German mas
ter, the attitude Of the German gov
ernment towards Belgium and Ser
bia causes less bewilderment. The
fullest expansion of German kultur
contemplates enslaving these subju-
gated races.
Iietzsche quotes with approval
what Wolf has written about that di-
vine German kultur. and adds:
eve hold that hardness, violence
everything evil, terrible, tryanni-
cal, wild-beast-like and serpent
like-in man, contributes to the ele-
walton of the Species" Stirner con-
tributes his bit by asserting, Might
is the supreme right? What does right
matter to me? have the right to do
what l have the power to do" What
other Germans, ordered by Prussian
ruthlessness, brutalized by their phil
osophy and maddened by the odor of
blood and powder, have not hesitated
to practice upon the little peoples be-
yond the German borders. Natural
ly the rest of the world regards them
as crazy as he.
War itself is the divine sport OF
the Prussian breed. General Bern
hardi wrote: "The lessons OF his
tory confirm the view that wars
which have been deliberately provok-
ed by farseeing statesmen have had
the happiest results" Textbooks for
the primary grades in the public
schools of German carry the follow
ing extracts from the philosophy OF
Nietzsche: "Ye shall love peace as
a means to new wars, and the short
peace more than the long. - Ye
say that it is the good cause that hal
loweth even war" Niezsche was
writing only his experience. He was
a part of the Prussian hordes that
overran France in the red winter OF
1S70-1S71.
7. uo, after thia camnaign that