In this same connection it may not be amiss for us to consider the predominant and predominating viewpoints of another and an equally formidable group of the foemen. In October, 1913, nearly a year before Germany started the World War, one of the recognised leaders of the association who called themselves "Young Germany" wrote in the official organ, the accepted mouthpiece of the Junker set and the Crown Prince's favoured adherents, a remarkable statement--that is, it would have been a remarkable statement coming from any other source than the source from whence it did come. It read as follows: "War is the noblest and holiest expression of human activity. For us, too, the great glad hour of battle will strike. Still and deep in the German heart must live the joy of battle and the longing for it. Let us ridicule to the uttermost the old women in breeches who fear war and deplore it as cruel or revolting. War is beautiful.... When here on earth a battle is won by German arms and the faithful dead ascend to heaven, a Potsdam lance corporal will call the guard to the door and 'Old Fritz,' springing from his golden throne, will give the command to present arms. That is the heaven of Young Germany!" The likening of Heaven to a place of eternal beatitude, populated by German soldiers, with a Potsdam lance corporal succeeding Saint Peter at the gate, and "Old Fritz"--Frederick the Great--in sole and triumphant occupancy of the Golden Throne, where, according to the conceptions of the most Christian races, The Almighty sits, is a picture requiring no comment. It speaks for itself. Also it speaks for the paranoia of militant Prussianism. I think I am in position to tell something of the growth of these sentiments among the Germans. As I stated on almost the first page of this little book, it fell to my lot to be on German soil in September and October of that first year of the Great War, before there was any prospect of our entering it as a belligerent Power, and when the civilian populace, having been exalted by the series of unbroken victories that had marked the first stage of hostilities for the German forces, east and west, was suffering from the depressions occasioned by the defeat before Paris, the retreat from the Marne back to the Aisne, and finally by the growing fear that Italy, instead of coming into the conflict as an ally of the two Teutonic Empires, might, if she became an active combatant at all, cast in her lot with France and with England.