Germany -- History -- Revolution, 1918; Germany -- Politics and government -- 1918-1933
Any Sunday morning in Berlin during the sessions of the Paris
Conference would probably have given more than one opportunity of
observing the revival of the only real religion existing in modern
capital cities--nationalism. On one Sunday I have in mind there were
several protest meetings against the proposals reported from Paris for
partitioning off German populations in the Saar district, West
Prussia, Danzig, German Bohemia, and the Tyrol, and for preventing the
union of German-Austria. For instance, you might have gone to the
Sport-Palast with Erzberger in the pulpit. I myself did not. The
rotund, rubicund, ebullient, emollient Erzberger, ex-Minister of
Propaganda and delegate to Spa, who looks like Winston Churchill
turned Papal Legate, was too ritualistic for me. I went to a "service"
at the Circus Busch, where the sermon was broader.
Come with me then along Unter den Linden past the gilt crosses and
cupolas of the Evangelical Dom and the shell-shattered sham classic
façade of the Imperial Palace--deserted shrines of the faith--to a
very dilapidated and dingy circus. There was a time when the
Protestants of Germany were driven into the depths of the woods and
the dens of wild beasts to hold their services. And to-day we find the
pastors of protestant nationalism symbolically perched on pasteboard
rocks amid woodland scenery, with a very realistic atmosphere of
menagerie. The congregation is characteristically middle-class and by
no means so formidable in appearance as the hungry, haggard workmen
and their women that we should have found in a meeting of the
dissenting internationalists.
* * * * *
As we come in Freiherr von Richthofen is perorating a sort of
commination service, each verse of which is received with a loud
response. The Paris Conference is worse than the Congress of Vienna
(ah). France is outraging and robbing Germany when wounded and a
prisoner (aah). But not a yard of German soil shall be surrendered
without consent of its population (aaah). Germany can be dissected
alive, but England will be disgraced and America dishonoured (aaah),
and a time will come when such outrages will find their retribution
(AAAH). A roar of applause which rouses the wild beasts in their dens,
so that they roar in unison. The Paris diplomats have at last
succeeded in stirring up again the weary wolves of war where they were
lying licking their wounds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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