World War, 1914-1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- France; World War, 1914-1918 -- Italy; World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
"We have all sinned, your people as well as mine, the English,
the French, the Germans, all, all of us,--but Germany has sinned
most." When M. Hanotaux spoke these words with a Hebraic fervor of
conviction, I did not have to be told what he meant. The people of
our time have sinned through their hot desire for material possession
of the earth and its riches--through commercialism, capitalism, call
it what you will. Each great nation has made its selfish race for
economic advancement at the expense of other peoples: commercial
rivalry has largely begotten this bloody war, which is essentially
a predatory raid by one barbarous tribe against the riches of its
neighbors. Whether England or Russia under similar circumstances
would have dared a similar attack on the liberties of the world is
open to speculation. To Germany alone, however, has been reserved the
distinction of elevating greed and the lust of power to the dignity
of a philosophic system, a creed with the religious sanction of that
"old German god" to smite the rivals of the Fatherland and take away
their wealth. It is because Germany has made a consistent monster out
of her materialistic interpretation of modern science that she is now
held up before the nations of the world as a spectacle and a warning.
"We have all sinned" in believing that the body is more than the
spirit, that food and pleasure and power are the primary ends of all
living; but Germany alone has had the effrontery to justify her
cynicism by conscious theory and to teach it systematically to all
her people. She has endowed with life a philosophical idea, given it
the personality of her people, created a national Frankenstein to be
feared and loathed. More, she is coming perilously nigh to imposing
her god upon the world!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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