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
The principle here neglected, which may be called mutuality by those who
misunderstand and dislike the word equality, does not offer so clear a
distinction between the Prussian and the other peoples as did the first
Prussian principle of an infinite and destructive opportunism; or, in
other words, the principle of being unprincipled. Nor upon this second
can one take up so obvious a position touching the other civilizations
or semi-civilizations of the world. Some idea of oath and bond there is
in the rudest tribes, in the darkest continents. But it might be
maintained, of the more delicate and imaginative element of reciprocity,
that a cannibal in Borneo understands it almost as little as a professor
in Berlin. A narrow and one-sided seriousness is the fault of barbarians
all over the world. This may have been the meaning, for aught I know, of
the one eye of the Cyclops; that the barbarian cannot see around things
or look at them from two points of view, and thus becomes a blind beast
and an eater of men. Certainly there can be no better summary of the
savage than this, which, as we have seen, unfits him for the duel. He is
the man who cannot love--no, nor even hate--his neighbor as himself.
But this quality in Prussia does have one effect which has reference to
the same question of the lower civilizations. It disposes once and for
all at least of the civilizing mission of Germany. Evidently the Germans
are the last people in the world to be trusted with the task. They are
as short-sighted morally as physically. What is their sophism of
"necessity" but an inability to imagine tomorrow morning? What is their
non-reciprocity but an inability to imagine, not a god or devil, but
merely another man? Are these to judge mankind? Men of two tribes in
Africa not only know that they are all men but can understand that they
are all black men. In this they are quite seriously in advance of the
intellectual Prussian, who cannot be got to see that we are all white
men. The ordinary eye is unable to perceive in the Northeast Teuton
anything that marks him out especially from the more colorless classes
of the rest of Aryan mankind. He is simply a white man, with a tendency
to the gray or the drab. Yet he will explain in serious official
documents that the difference between him and us is a difference between
"the master race and the inferior race."
*How to Know "The Master Race."*
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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