Okolona messenger. (Okolona, Miss.) 1900-current, 1918-04-04

the world war at all?
Do the people Of Germany. and those
OF the Teutonic alliance generally,
sympathize with the aims and pur-
poses of the German government Or
are they simply bowling to conditions
they are unable TO mend-yielding un-
willing assent to war they would
not wage If they could have their way?
What really caused the war! When
may the world hope for Its ending?
All these and hundreds of other kim
dred questions have been answered.
and are daily being answered. in a
dozen different ways. For the most
part, the answers are based upon SUI
perhcial and very partial aspects OF
the matter, and are. necessarily, only
partly satisfactory and partly true.
II we would really understand the
Significance of the world war we must
delve among certain musty manu-
scripts that lie Wondering in the IL
braries of the German universities. We
must read what the masters of the
Germanic philosophy have written. We
must learn what the Teutonic mind
has been taught-what 1t has been
thinking, in what it has been believ-
ing-and the reasons and the prin-
4ciples upon which it has based Its be-
lief. We must get the mental setting
of Germany past; for only in the light
of this shall we be able to actually
comprehend the mental phenomena
that underle the attitude and the acts
of the Germany of the present.
Regardless Of any sympathy, or lack
of sympathy, that may exist between
the German government and the Ger
man people-whether the blame for
the war, and in particular for its un-
precedented brutAlities, rests upon the
Hohenzollern caste alone or upon the
whole mass of the people of Germany
1T is to the philosophy Of Germany
that we must look for the real cause
of this bloody iniquity. For, mediately
or Immediately, Germany has been
made the bloody instrument Of false
philosophy--a philosophy that bloomed
i'm the blatant blasphemies OF
INietzsche and fruited upon the blood
soaked fields of France and Belgium
and Servia and Roumania and Meso-
,potamia ard Russia.
This is philosophy that commends
u boat outrages against undefended,
neutral merchantmen and passenger
slips upon the high seas; that gloats
over the mangled forms of little chill.
dren slain in Zeppelin roads upon non
combatants; that honors the Judas
ambassadors who stir up sedition and
plot against the neutral nations to
which they have been accredited-un-
less they commit the objectionable OF.
tense of failing to obliterate complete
ily the evidences of their duplicit.y
II would be interesting, If space per
mitted, to 60 far back and trace the
development of this fearful philosophy
and to identify the channels through
which it has been transmitted from
great antiquity. For 1t had its roots
many centuries ago and is not prod
uct, merely, of the present age. That
1t found a friendlJ environment among
the Teutonic peoples. and particularly
among their universities, many cen
uries ago, no one who reads history
with an unbiased mind will attempt %
deny.
But we must be content with men
tioning only two or three philosophers
of comparatively recent times. These
are cited, not so much for what they
originated as because they gathered
into definite and transmissible form so
many Of these iconoclastic doctrines
which, maturing slowly beneath the
surface of German thought. we're des.
tined to find their ultimate expression
in the writings of Frederick Nietzsche,
Iniquity knows no fatherland. Hence
it need cause no surprise that one OF
the most potent factors in shaping the
Germanic philosophy was not OF Ger
man origin. In Nicoolo Machiavellir
an Italian courtier of the Renaissance,
appeared The uuDluSAAu6 SAdmPAOA VI
such brazen intrigue as startled even
the most INSCRIPTIONS diplomats u
his day. 1t required the mellowing in
fiuence Of century or two. combined
with the vanishing impaired by inter
prefers more or less removed, to SO
far soften his pernicious teachings as
to make them acceptable to any but an
avowedly unprincipled people. Yet
MachiavellPs precepts, so softened, pn-
Questionably went far toward prepar
ing German soil for the more virile
sowing of Nietzsche. They tended, AT
least, to break down lingering scrupu'
lousness and to breed contempt for
the moral law.
In Schopenhauer Nietzsche found
his earliest master; and, although be
parted from him later on, IL is to
Schopenhauer, principally, that he
owes his characteristic doctrine Of the
Will to Power. In Schopenhauer, It is
true, this was merely the Will to Live
Nietzsche carried that doctrine to its
logical conclusion--if the Machiavel-
1ian influence is properly taken into
consideration.
Schopenhauer perceived that the
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