The Barbarism of BerlinChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
History
The Barbarism of Berlin
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Germany -- Politics and government; World War, 1914-1918 -- Causes
skill and valour of the Germans in repelling such an attack. Somehow
it must be made a common and obvious collapse for England; and yet a
daring and unexpected triumph for Germany. In trying to express these
contradictory conceptions simultaneously, he got rather mixed. Therefore
he bade Germania fill all her vales and mountains with the dying agonies of
this almost invisible earwig; and let the impure blood of this cockroach
redden the Rhine down to the sea.
But it would be unfair to base the criticism on the utterance of any
accidental and hereditary prince: and it is quite equally clear in the
case of the philosophers who have been held up to us, even in England, as
the very prophets of progress. And in nothing is it shown more sharply
than in the curious confused talk about Race and especially about the
Teutonic Race. Professor Harnack and similar people are reproaching us,
I understand, for having broken "the bond of Teutonism": a bond which the
Prussians have strictly observed both in breach and observance. We note
it in their open annexation of lands wholly inhabited by negroes, such as
Denmark. We note it equally in their instant and joyful recognition of
the flaxen hair and light blue eyes of the Turks. But it is still the
abstract principle of Professor Harnack which interests me most; and in
following it I have the same complexity of inquiry, but the same simplicity
of result. Comparing the Professor's concern about "Teutonism" with his
unconcern about Belgium, I can only reach the following result: "A man
need not keep a promise he has made. But a man must keep a promise he has
not made." There certainly was a treaty binding Britain to Belgium; if
it was only a scrap of paper. If there was any treaty binding Britain to
Teutonism it is, to say the least of it, a lost scrap of paper; almost
what one would call a scrap of waste-paper. Here again the pedants under
consideration exhibit the illogical perversity that makes the brain reel.
There is obligation and there is no obligation: sometimes it appears that
Germany and England must keep faith with each other; sometimes that Germany
need not keep faith with anybody and anything; sometimes that we alone
among European peoples are almost entitled to be Germans; sometimes that
besides us, Russians and Frenchmen almost rise to a Germanic loveliness of
character. But through all there is, hazy but not hypocritical, this sense
of some common Teutonism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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