Lest We Forget: World War StoriesThompson, John G. (John Gilbert)
History
Lest We Forget: World War Stories
Thompson, John G. (John Gilbert)
Readers -- History; Readers -- World War, 1914-1918
The Germans would not understand this, and they would not understand
that the last half of the ninth inning in a ball game is seldom played
because the winners do not wish to "rub in" the defeat of their
opponents. Some think that it is because German children have had few
sports and games that the German nation has so little sense of honesty
and fair play.
In German schools, the pupils at one time were allowed to engage in
certain sports, but later these were officially forbidden.
The rulers of Germany have for years forbidden anything taught in their
schools which did not praise Germany and make the children believe
their Emperor to be a god. The pupils are taught in history, geography,
and even in reading, only those facts about other countries which show
how much inferior they are to Germany.
So the pupils have never learned the true and the interesting things
about other countries in the great wide world. German history tells
only about Germany's great war victories. The pupils never learn of
Germany's defeats in war. The teacher makes the history class the
liveliest of the day, often seeming to be more of a Fourth of July
orator than a school teacher. The children are taught that Germany is
the one civilized country in the world; that there was never anything
good that did not come from Germany; that even the victory of the
North, in the Civil War in America, was due to there being such a large
majority of German-born men on the Northern side.
Their geography tells only about Germany's political divisions, its
civilization, and its commerce. Their readers contain stories of German
military "heroes." The two great school holidays are the Emperor's
Birthday and Sedan Day, the anniversary of the great defeat of the
French in the Franco-Prussian War.
The walls of the schoolrooms are covered with pictures of the Emperor,
the Empress, and of battle scenes, especially those showing German
soldiers bringing in French prisoners. The singing of "Deutschland über
Alles" occurs several times a day.
A German boy is trained into a soldier, hard-hearted and deceitful. The
pupils in school are made to spy on one another, and the teachers, too,
spy on one another. An American boy was expelled from a German
gymnasium in Berlin, because he refused to "tattle-tale" on the pupils
in his class.
The Germans have not been taught to respect the rights of others,--no
one apparently has any personal rights except the Kaiser and certain
high officials; and so great has been their power that they have been
able to cheat the whole German nation, and they have attempted to cheat
the other nations of the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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