Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1918-03-29

n + ALL the features of the
Great War that make it war
~ without precedent and with
out parallel in history, none is so
fraught with incalculable consequent
ces to the future of civilizat ton as the
fact that this is literally a war not of
armies, nor of governments, but of
entire peoples. There is no other
feature of the struggle which it is
of such supreme and present i'm
portance for all who hope for a
stable peace to bear in mind and at
tempt to understand. For at this
hour the Power that precipitated
war at the moment of her own
choosing is attempting to precipitate
peace, also at the moment of her
choice.
Now this Power is the very one
that is responsible for the fact that
this is a war of whole nations-this
Power which, at the very outset of
hostilities, modified not only every
human and every material resource
of her people, but also every in
herited ideal and loyalty, every fu-
ture hope and aspiration, of the ma
ton; which deliberately, for the first
time in history, has made a by-word
of culture, by betraying it into the
service of ferocious military aggres-
sion.
No consideration of the German
nation that fails to face the enor-
nous gulf that separates them from
modern democracies in the only
province that counts here, the prov
ince of political thinking, will serve
any purposes save those of the mod
ern scientific feudalism entrenched
less strongly in the soil of it's oppo-
nents than in the brain and the very
blood of its own people, whether they
belong to the class that issues or the
mass that takes orders. 1t is in the
interest of these latter. as it is in the
interest, finally, of even the former,
that we who have evolved another
philosophy and another practice of
government, should see the German
people as they really are politically
not as our ignorance, or a shallow
idealism, or self-delusion, would
wish them to be.
Every appeal to the German peo-
pie over the heads of it's leaders, eV-
cry attempt to impress it with the
good faith and disinterestedness of
it's opponents in this war, every as
surance that we are fighting, not for
the determination of the German
people but for their right to develop
their great virtues and manifest
genius in the humane forms ensured
alone under the influence of free
institutions, pre-supposes in Germany
the existence of at least a kernel Of
the sort of thought which we de-
scribe by the phase public opinion" ="
But no one who has been long and
intimately familiar with the inside
of German institutions, with the
ways of thinking in typical German
circles, whether liberal or conserva-
tive so-called, with the whole po-
litical atmosphere breathed by rad
ical or reactionary within the bor-
ders of the German empire, can hes
itate to say that there never has
been in Germany any such thing as
public opinion. "
Why is it so impossible for the
German mind to apprehend and I'M
derstand that which we mean by
public opinion?" For the reason
that the German nation has always
been, psychologically, on a war foot
ing. Her mentality has been, in q
quite literal sense, the mentality of
an army. And an army is the one
place where there can be no public
opinion. An army, indeed, is allow
ed it's recreation, when off duty. Nor
is the censorship strict in regard to
the range and license permitted to
those who furnish it's recreation,
provided these do not infringe upon
the authority of the army discipline.
Many foreigners. especially Anglo
Saxons, were misled into believing
in the emancipated political state of
German opinion by the extreme
! freedom with which the German
novel and particularly the German
.ta ua traated all socia1 fra aditionc
and conventions. especially those per-
tanning to sex. The grossness of the
extremely clever German caricatur-
lists was indicative of a public grad
uated. in the highest as in the mean