These, then, are the spoken thoughts of civilian leaders of our enemy. If the leaders believe these things their followers must also believe them; must believe, with the Reverend Lehmann and the Reverend Vorwerk, that God is a German God, and should properly be so addressed by a worshipper upon his knees, since one prayer begins "O German God!"; must believe, with Von Bernhardi--who spoke of "the miserable life of all small states"--that "to allow to the weak the same right of existence as to the strong, vigorous nation means presumptuous encroachment upon the natural laws of development"; and with Treitschke, that "the small nations have no right to existence and ought to be swallowed up"; and with Lasson, that "It is moral, inasmuch as it is reasonable, that the small states, in spite of treaties, should become the prey of the strongest"; and must believe that to Prussia was appointed the task of curing the whole world, America included, of what--according to the Prussian ideal--ails it. It is the nation which believes these things, and which has striven in this war to practice what its teachers preached, that we now are called upon to fight. If we remember this as we go along it will help us to understand some of the things the enemy will seek to do unto us; and should help him to understand some of the things we mean to do unto him. Indeed, there is hope of his being able some day to understand that we entered this war not against a people or a nation so much as we entered it against an idea, a disease, a form of paranoia, a form of rabies, a form of mania which has turned men into blasphemous and murderous mad dogs, running amuck and slavering in the highways of the world. What would any intelligent American do if a mad dog entered the street where he lived, even though that dog, before it went mad, had been a kind and docile creature? And what is he going to do in the existing situation? The same answer does for both questions. Because there is only one answer. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Speaking of Prussians, by Irvin S. Cobb