The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-01-30
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

The world breathes easier now that the myth of the unconquerable German army has been exploded, and her territory Is occupied by the allies, while her proud navy lies powerless in the hands of vic- tors who took it over without the firing of gun.
 The myth not only made fools out of the Germans, transforming them from nation of idealists into the crassest ma- terialists of the twentieth century; con verting a people who has laid no claim to assertiveness into an empire of super men who looked down with pity on all who had not come into existence under the benign influences of Teutonic kul- itur.
 It is hard to realize that one of the younger nationalities, for Germany, after all, as an united empire dates back less than half century and yet within a little more than twoscore years, she be- came intoxicated with conquest and was obsessed by the idea that it was her manifest destiny not only to have place in the sun" but that other nations would have to sit in her shadow. a
 I agree with the publicists who claim that the millions of war indemnity de- manded of the defeated French proved to be gift poisonous to the true welfare of the state. It is easy to be seen that it is not good for nation to become suddenly wealthy as Germany did after the end of the war with France. A trim lity of evils was born out of her vic tory-iuxury in habits, materialism in thought, realism in literature and art These three all had their part in de- bauching the original simple Teutonic na- lture.
 It is but trite to join in the chorus tha. an enormous self-conceit has ruined the German official mind, for 1t gives the cue to the cynical phrase, just for a scrap of paper" which pr. Dillon well says, "will stick like Nessus' shirt to memory of it's author" the imperial chancellor, Herr Won Bethmann- Hollweg, who at one time was called the German odSdTu, WnO III HIS SnaineieSS dtleiilpt to excuse the infamy of the deed. tried to put on military necessity the need of the war machine hacking it's way through a neighbor's territory.
 sss
 Frederick the Great might well be pleased to look down upon the advance made over his ruthlessness in war and ltrickery in diplomacy, for he at least tried to hide his double dealing while his pupils came out into the open and boldly defended their treachery. The bride of the soldier-caste-a dangerous thing at best, is doubly so when it is backed up by an unprincipled diplomacy which tears up treaties at will and laughs at international law.
 I lived in Berlin, and I know the n- science of the man in uniform towards the civilian. I have noted the vain- glorious parade of their superiority until yearned to be back in free America where the rights of the private citizen were not trampled upon by the soldier and where the President of the great
 
 and not war lord upholding the offen- , sive swagger of his army, but doing al ! in his power to indoctrinate the Potsdam megalomania.
 With the myth of "an unconquerable army" another twin bubble that de mocracy can't fight" blown by the | Wilhelmstrasse gang has been pune tured, for the American. English and French systems of government by popu- liar elections and parliamentary debate with the kind of civilization which flows from such institutions when brought 1T direct conflict with the highly efficient imperalists bureaucracy and military or ganization of Prussia, not only beat the rivaled them in the manufacture of mu
 nitions.
 'M;litarisimus" with it's hateful ally the nightmare of pan-Teutonism, ha. ? been exercised by mowling over the for r liner and curplng the latter. Nothing l stands out clearer in the light of the dis
 integration of the German armies thar
 that soulless machine which has tt s be driven in herd, shoulder to shoulaef . for fear that it would fall to pieces in tn, absence of it's autocratic leader is ) mass without initiative, or independenc, S of spirit, and cannot stand against troop
 born in free counties and led by free @ men.
 The mighty Kaiser feil and what
 fan for in his asylum he makes but
 sorry show, and none so poor as to d him reverence" The hand of his owl people is againsts him, and this is as i !. should be, for in his reckless despotisn Il he brought them into the valley o Il humiliation. The war that was born O I faith in the gospel of blood and iron
 in the doctrine that might is right, tha
 military power and material strength ar the only forces which can make a natio Q great, has been the undoing of the grea '- German empire, whose founders laughe at the mushroom republic or France p purified and stronger than ever in it = history.
 Free peoples hate despotism in an it nationality will see to it that the worl