New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 1, No. 1: From the Beginning to March, 1915, With IndexVarious
History
New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 1, No. 1: From the Beginning to March, 1915, With Index
Various
World War, 1914-1918
In the last summary I suggested that barbarism, as we mean it, is not
mere ignorance or even mere cruelty. It has a more precise sense, and
means militant hostility to certain necessary human ideas. I took the
case of the vow or the contract which Prussian intellectualism would
destroy. I urged that the Prussian is a spiritual barbarian, because he
is not bound by his own past, any more than a man in a dream. He avows
that when he promised to respect a frontier on Monday he did not foresee
what he calls "the necessity" of not respecting it on Tuesday. In short,
he is like a child who at the end of all reasonable explanations and
reminders of admitted arrangements has no answer except "But I want to."
There is another idea in human arrangements so fundamental as to be
forgotten, but now for the first time denied. It may be called the idea
of reciprocity; or, in better English, of give and take. The Prussian
appears to be quite intellectually incapable of this thought. He cannot,
I think, conceive the idea that is the foundation of all comedy--that in
the eyes of the other man he is only the other man. And if we carry this
clue through the institutions of Prussianized Germany we shall find how
curiously his mind has been limited in the matter. The German differs
from other patriots in the inability to understand patriotism. Other
European peoples pity the Poles or the Welsh for their violated borders,
but Germans only pity themselves. They might take forcible possession of
the Severn or the Danube, of the Thames or the Tiber, of the Garry or
the Garonne--and they would still be singing sadly about how fast and
true stands the watch on the Rhine and what a shame it would be if any
one took their own little river away from them. That is what I mean by
not being reciprocal; and you will find it in all that they do, as in
all that is done by savages.
*"Laughs When He Hurts You."*
Here again it is very necessary to avoid confusing this soul of the
savage with mere savagery in the sense of brutality or butchery, in
which the Greeks, the French, and all the most civilized nations have
indulged in hours of abnormal panic or revenge. Accusations of cruelty
are generally mutual. But it is the point about the Prussian that with
him nothing is mutual. The definition of the true savage does not
concern itself even with how much more he hurts strangers or captives
than do the other tribes of men. The definition of the true savage is
that he laughs when he hurts you and howls when you hurt him. This
extraordinary inequality in the mind is in every act and word that comes
from Berlin.
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