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
This explanation is justified. Consider the German professor in the beer
garden, in the relations of everyday life, in his amusements. With
certain notable exceptions he excels only in discovering and collecting
materials for study and in drawing from them, by mechanical operations,
solutions that rest wholly upon text and argument and make no appeal
whatever to ordinary judgment and good sense. What a disproportion often
between his science and his real education. What vulgarity of tastes and
sentiments and language. What brutality of methods on the part of this
man whose authority is indisputable in his specialty. Take this learned
man from his university chair, place him on that scene of war where
force can alone reign and where the gross appetites are unchained, it is
not surprising that his conduct approaches that of savages.
*A Culture of Violence.*
That is the current judgment and not without reason. The savant and the
man, among the Germans, are only too often strangers to each other. The
German in war is inhuman not merely because of an explosion of his true
nature, gross and violent, but by order. His brutality is calculated and
systematized. It justifies the words of La Harpe, "There is such a thing
as a scientific barbarity." In 1900 the German Emperor haranguing his
soldiers about to set sail for China, exhorted them to leave nothing
living in their path and to bear themselves like Huns.
If, then, in this war, in the manner in which they have prepared and
provoked it and now conduct it, they violate without scruple the laws of
the civilized world, it is not despite their superior culture, it is in
consequence of that very culture. They are barbarous because they are
more civilized. How can such a combination of contradictory elements,
such a synthesis, be possible?
Fichte in the famous discourses to the German Nation which he delivered
at the University of Berlin during the Winter of 1807 and 1808, had one
object: to arouse the German Nation by kindling its self-consciousness,
that is to say, its pure Germanic essence, _Deutschheit_, in order to
realize that essence when possible beyond its borders and to make it
dominate the world. The general idea which must guide Germany in the
accomplishment of this double task is: Germany is to all the rest of the
world as good is to evil.
The appeal of Fichte was heard. During the century which followed,
Germany in the most precise and practical manner, on the one hand built
up the theory of Germanism or _Deutschtum_, on the other hand prepared
the domination of Germanism in the world. This notion of Germanism
furnishes, if I am not mistaken, the principle of the inference which I
wish to indicate, the explanation of the surprising solidarity which
Germans have created between culture and barbarism.
It would be interesting to probe this notion and follow its development.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account