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
shrunk from such a glaring "biological necessity." A pair of puling
pious sentimentalists if you like. But Supermen! Nonsense. O, my brother
journalists, if you revile the Prussians, call them sheep led by snobs,
call them beggars on horseback, call them sausage eaters, depict them in
the good old English fashion in spectacles and comforter, seedy overcoat
buttoned over paunchy figure, playing the contrabass tuba in a street
band; but do not flatter them with the heroic title of Superman, and
hold up as magnificent villainies worthy of Milton's Lucifer these
common crimes of violence and raid and lust that any drunken blackguard
can commit when the police are away, and that no mere multiplication can
dignify. As to Nietzsche, with his Polish hatred of Prussia (who
heartily reciprocated the sentiment), when did he ever tell the Germans
to allow themselves to be driven like sheep to the slaughter in millions
by mischievous dolts who, being for the most part incapable of reading
ten sentences of a philosophic treatise without falling asleep, allow
journalists as illiterate as themselves to persuade them that he got his
great reputation by writing a cheap gospel for bullies? Strictly between
ourselves, we also are an illiterate people; but we may at least hold
our tongues about matters we don't understand, and not say in the face
of Europe that the English believe that the composer of Parsifal was a
Militarist Prussian (he was an exiled revolutionist); that Nietzsche was
a diciple of Wagner (Nietzsche preferred the music of Bizet, a
Frenchman); and that the Kaiser is a disciple of Nietzsche, who would
have laughed his childish pietism to scorn.
*The Simple Answer.*
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