Observe that extraordinary phrase, "to absorb the world into ourselves." To conceive such a national destiny is to resurrect the dead ambitions of an Alexander or a Caesar; to teach it as a right to young men is to sow in their minds an egotism which breeds distorted conceptions of individual honor and justice, and gives to them an utterly false standard of national life. Not alone from the lecturer and the essayist came this idea that the Germans are a superior race set apart to rule the world. It was preached in the pulpits as a Divine truth by those who even had the effrontery to support their assertions by references to the Holy Scriptures. Listen to some of the thoughts proclaimed by ordained ministers of Christ to their German congregations: "It may sound proud, my friends, but we are conscious that it is also in all humbleness that we say it; the German soul is God's soul; it shall and will rule over mankind." May we be spared the consequences of a German "humbleness" which fairly struts and swaggers, and which finds further expression in the words of another Doctor of Divinity when he declares: "Verily the Bible is our book. It was given and assigned to us, and in it we read the original text of our destiny, which proclaims to mankind salvation or disaster as we will it." "As we will it!" There in four words is the whole story of the Prussian doctrine of the "superman," of a "place in the sun." Paganism, tinctured with modern materialism and a degenerate type of Christianity, broods today over Germany. Christian ministers have proclaimed Jehovah to be the national deity of the empire, a monopolized German God, who relies on the physical might of His people to destroy those who oppose His will as that will is interpreted by His chosen race. Thus the Prussian leaders would harmonize modern thought with their ancient religion of physical strength through brutalizing Christianity. In view of the spirit of hypocrisy and bad faith manifesting an entire lack of conscience, we ought not to be astonished that the Berlin Foreign Office never permitted a promise or a treaty engagement to stand in the way of a course of action which the German Government deemed expedient. I need not cite as proof of this fact the flagrant violations of the treaty neutralizing Belgium--and the recent treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This discreditable characteristic of the German foreign policy was accepted by German diplomats as a matter of course and as a natural if not a praiseworthy method of dealing with other Governments.