The vidette. (Iuka, Tishomingo County, Miss.) 1912-1967, 1918-04-11
CERElANY'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
T. Have Been Adopted for Base of
E.. the German Propaganda
By JOHN LElSK TAFT.

Liberty Loan?
Why should the United 6satss Be in
the. world war at ALI
Do the people of Gernszy. and those
Of the Teutonic allisHss gsRsyally,
sympathize with the ates aAA pur-
poses of the German gov9knmeatf Or
are they simply bowling 10 eGAAftions
they are unable to mend-Teeidfng un.
willing assent to a war easy would
not wage If they could have tAe1s way?
What really caused the wsys When
may the world hope for its sadingf
All these and hundreds ~ ether hin.
dred questions have been answered,
and are daily being answered. In a
dozen different ways. For The most
part, the answers are base6 upcA su
perfcial and very partial aspects Of
the matter, and arc. necessarily. oaly
partly satisfactory and partly trxe.
II we would really us1srstand the
significance Of the world war ws AUST
delve among certain nasty manu-
scripts that lie Wondering IN the IL
braries of the German universities. We
Germanic philosophy have written. We
must learn what the Teutonio mind
has been taught-what II has been
thinking, in what 1t has keen heliev-
lng-and the reasons and the prin-
ciples upon which it has based lee be-
lief. We must get the mental sstting
Of Germany past; for only n the light
Of this shall we be able 20 astually
comprehend the mental phenomena
that underlie 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 parti :ular for it's un-
precedented brutalitits, rests upon the
Hohenzollern caste asone 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 lniquity For. nsdiately
or Immediately. Germany has been
made the bloody instrument Of Q false
philosophy philosophy that bloomed
in the blatant blasphemies Of
Nletzsche and fruitei upon the blood
soaked fields of France and Belgium
and Servia and Roumania and Meso-
potamia aid Russia.
This is philosophy thot eommsnds
tI-boat outrages agalnDt 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 nom
combatants; that honors the Judas
ambassadors who stir up sedition and
plot against the Neutral nations to
which they have been accredited--lIn-
less they commit the objectionable Of
Tense Of failing to obliterate complete
ly the evidences of their duplicit.y
II would be interesting, If space per
mitted, to go far back and trace the
development of this fearful philosophy
and to identify the channels through
which 1t has been transmitted from
great antiquity. For it had it's roots
many centuries ago and is not prod
uct, merely, of the present age. That
Il found 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 o
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 transmissihle form 80
many of these iconoclastic doctrines
yhich, maturing slowly beneath the
surface Of German thought, were dss-
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 Niccolo Machiavelli,
an italian courtier of the Renaissance,
appeared the unblushing champion OF
such braZen intrigue as startled even
the most INSCRIPTIONS diplomats Of
his day. 1t required the mellowing in
luence of century or two, combined
with the vanishing impaired by inter
prefers more or less removed. to 40
AR soften his pernicious teachings ~
to make them acceptable to any but an
avowedly unprincipled people. Yet
Machiavellis precepts, so softened. un.
questionably went far toward prepar-
ing German soil for the more virils
sowing of Nietzsche. They tended, 81
least, to break down lingering scrupu-
lousness and to breed contempt for
the moral law.
In Schopenhauer Nietzsche found
his earliest master; and, although he
parted from him later on, it is to
Schopenhauer, principally. that hs
owes his characteristic doctrine Of the
win to Power. In Schopenhauer, il is
true, this was merely the VIII to Live,
Nietzsche carried that doctrine to its
logical conclusion-if the Machiavel-
ian influence is properly taken into
,onsIdera ton.
ScEopenhauer perceived that the
VIZ ~ Live caused evil as well as