Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1918-04-28
RRIANY'S BARBAROUS POLICY BUILT ON A FOUNDATION OF
 MOST VICIOUS PHILOSOPHY
For Centuries the Worst that Emanated from the Fertile Minds of Men of Evil Genius Have Been Adopted for Base of
 the German Propaganda
By TOHN LEISK TAFT.

ihSh RAACst Ok Opg, HG tained that tho evil outweighed the good; and taught that true happiness would be Impossible until man became able to kill Will with Will: that is to say, until the Will to Live was willed out of existence and man reduced him. self. voluntarily, to asceticism.
 But asceticism held no attractions for Nietzsche. His was not the type of intellect that submits tamely to prescription; and. while he readily ac- cepted Schopenhauer's premise of tho Will to Live. he very quickly diverged from him as to the conclusions to be drawn therefrom. He held, on the con- trary, that true happiness. or at any rate true heroism, lay in stiff-necked indifference toward all the ills that flesh is heir to-" and particularly, in the annexation of whatsoever desira- ble things one could find. regardless of any others claims. or rights to them. His "Zarathustra," discoursing Of the superman, exclaims:
 Why so soft. so tender, so concili- atory? Why Is such self-denial in your hearts? Such little consciousness of destiny in your look? This new table, o my brethren. write above you BECOME HARD!"
 There was but one logical develop ment for man of Nietzsche's type, gwen such a starting point He be- came the supreme egoist of all ages and in his blaring egotism erystallized into definite and coherent propositions all those errant and rebellious eccen- tricities which had characterized Ger man thought. He gave to the Germanic philosophy its full and final express sion.
 It was thus that Germany found in F'riederich Nietzsche the fitting spokesman for all apostles of brutal 1ty. He became at once the heir and the administrator of all revolts against delicacy and decency. He was con- m1tted. absolutely and wholehearted- ly, to iconoclasm. These revolutionary tendencies had long sheltered in the shadows of the German universities; and it remained only for later days to bring forth one who might declare them "as one having authority" In the half-mad, ego-ridden Nietzsche, with his brain of lava and his pen of flame, Germanic philosophy found its spokesman.
 To other peoples Nietzsche was merely phenomenon. His writings were to be read and admired for their thunderous and flaming rhetoric. They were not to be accepted literally; they were too subversive of all that civiliza- tion stood for. No man, it was felt, could so write of these things and real ly mean exactly what he wrote. A le- zion of reviewers swarmed over his books, adapting. construing, interpret ing, each according to his own fancy, the passionate fulminations of this past master of invective.
 But to Germany, or at least to the leaders of German thought, Nietzsche spake as a prophet. In their ears his scathlng doctrines became, not rhet- orlc. but religion. And his vision of the superman, ruthless, hard, taking without scruple, injuring without qualm, law unto himself-this was the false god after which Germany went avidly astray.
 Tn our present civilized world" declared Nietzsche, i've know only the DEGENERATE criminal the criminal who distrusts himself, who often seeks to belittle and excuse his act; and we try to forget that EVERY GREAT MAN WAS A CRIMINAL, only not in miserable style, but in great style. We forget that EVERY GREAT ACT IS A CRIME"
 And so we find our iconoclast. who began with accepting Schopenhauer' I harmless Will to Live, evolving the Will to Power. He no longer holds merely that lf-preservation is na- lures first law" he proclaims that it Is right and lawful that he who can shall take whatever he will-provided only that it adds to and does not de- tract from his ability to take yet more ruthlessly whatever his neighbor may have that pleases his sovereign fancy. Nletzsche had reached the point where ] AC uSlu ulIlSell dpOVe the moral law and reversed or tried to reverse, all accepted standards of right and wrong.
 Nor did he cease with this: for the prophet, perforce, must justify his prophecy, In the closing chapter of his book, Der Anti-Christ," he scaled the very summit of blasphemous presump- tion and gave free and final rein to his furious invective Here he writes:
 T condemn Christianity. bring l against it the most terrible of accusa- tions that ever an accuser put into words. It is to me the greatest of all imaginable corruptions. It has left nothing untouched by it's depravity. It has made a worthlessness out of every value, lie out of every truth. a sin l cut of everything straightforward. healthy and honest. Ii lives by pain and woe; it has created pain and woe in order to perpetuate itself It invent ed the idea of original sin. It invent. ed the onuality nf snuls heforo Cod :