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
Let the idle Englishmen call us Huns; you may, for all I care,
characterize the warriors of our splendid Landwehr as sons of Attila; it
is enough for us if this Landwehr can shatter into a thousand pieces the
ring of our merciless enemies. Far better that you should call us sons
of Attila, cross yourselves in fear and remain outside our borders, than
that you should indict tender inscriptions upon the tomb of our German
name, calling us the beloved descendants of Goethe. The epithet Huns is
coined by people who, themselves Huns, are experiencing disappointment
in their criminal attacks on the life of a sound and valorous race,
because it knows the trick of parrying a fearful blow with still more
fearful force. In their impotence, they take refuge in curses.
I say nothing against the Belgian people. The peaceful passage of German
troops, a question of life for Germany, was refused by Belgium because
the Government had made itself a tool of England and France. This same
Government then organized an unparalleled guerrilla warfare in order to
support a lost cause, and by that act--Herr Rolland, you are a
musician!--struck the horrible keynote of conflict. If you are at all in
a position to break your way through the giant's wall of anti-German
lies, read the message to America, by our Imperial Chancellor, of Sept.
7; read further the telegram which on Sept. 8 the Kaiser himself
addressed to President Wilson. You will then discover things which it is
necessary to know in order to understand the calamity of Louvain.
*Another Reply to Rolland*
*By Karl Wolfskehl.*
To you, Rolland, belonging as a chosen one to the more important
Frenchmen who can rise above their race, the German nature has often
been revealed. To you, now, we shall make answer, offer frank testimony
concerning the spirit of the time, concerning that fate, that very fate
in which you, the Frenchman, do not believe. You do not believe in it;
what to us is fate, mysterious necessity, to you is fatalité, an
unavoidable Alp which threatens the individual in his individual
freedom. This fatalité, we, too, do not believe in it, but we do believe
in the forces which bring forth the eternal in human will, that these
both are one, will and forces, one with necessity, with actuality, with
creative, moral power, of which all great ideas are the children, the
idea of freedom, the idea of the beautiful, the idea of tragic fidelity,
and that these, reaching far above being and passing away, are
nevertheless real, life entire, fact entire. All that which is as dear
to you as to us, great works and great feelings, resignation and
self-restraint, all that is necessity, is fate, that became will--all
that a unity out of choice and compulsion. All that is for us eternal,
not according to the measure of time, but according to the beginning and
the power of its working forces, in so far as it is necessary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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