To assert that any great nation has in these modern days deliberately
built around herself such a wall, may seem an extreme statement, and I
will therefore support it with an instance--only one instance out of
many, out of hundreds; it will suffice to indicate the sort of
information about the world lying outside the wall that Germany has
carefully prepared for the children in her schools. I quote from the
letter of an American parent recently living in Berlin, who placed his
children in a school there: "The text books were unique. I suppose there
was not in any book of physics or chemistry that they studied an
admission that a citizen of some other country had taken any forward
step; every step was by some line of argument assigned to a German. As
you might expect, the history of the modern world is the work of German
Heroes. The oddest example, however, was the geography used by
Katherine. (His daughter, aged thirteen.) This contained maps indicating
the Deutsche Gebiete (the German "spheres of influence" in foreign
lands) in striking colors. In North and South America, including the
United States and Canada, there are said to be three classes of
inhabitants--negroes, Indians and Germans. For the United States there
is a black belt for negroes and a middle-west section for Indians; but
the rest is Deutsche Gebiete. Canada is occupied mainly by Indians. The
matter was brought to my attention because one of Katherine's girl
friends asked her whether she was of negro or Indian blood; and when she
replied she was neither her friend pointed out that this was impossible
for she surely was not German." Information less laughable about the
morals taught in the German schools I forbear to quote.
During forty years Germany sat within her wall, learning and repeating
Prussian incantations. It recalls those savage rites where the
participants, by shouting and by concerted rhythmic movements, work
themselves into a frothing state. This has befallen Germany. Within
her wall of moral isolation her sight has grown distorted, her sense
of proportion is lost; a set of reeling delusions possesses her--her
own greatness, her mission of _Kultur_, her contempt for the rest of
mankind, her grievance that mankind is in league to cramp and suppress
her.
These delusions have been attended by their proper Nemesis: Germany
has misunderstood us all--everybody and everything outside her wall.
Like the bewitched dwarfs in certain old magic tales, whose talk
reveals their evil without their knowing it, Germans constantly utter
words of the most naïf and grotesque self-betrayal--as when the German
ambassador was being escorted away from England and was urged by his
escort not to be so downcast; the war being no fault of his. He
answered in sincere sadness:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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