“Every school, every pulpit, every newspaper, every book, became a pumping-station for hot air impregnated with the new morals. Poets, philosophers, orators, teachers, statesmen, romancers, were summoned to the pumps: Rivers of beer and wine flowed into the national abdomen and were converted into mental and moral flatulency. “For thirty years Germany had been on a steady dream diet. Every school, every pulpit, every newspaper, every book, became a pumping-station for hot air impregnated with the new morals. Poets, philosophers, orators, teachers, states' men, romancers, were summoned to the pumps. “Morning hate with its coffee and prayers, its hourly self-contentment with its toil, its evening superiority with its beer and frankfurters. History was falsified, philosophy bribed, religion coerced and corrupted, conscience silenced--at first by sophistry, then by the iron hand. Hot air was blowing from all sides. It was no gentle breeze. It was a simoom, a tornado. No one could stand before it--not even a sturdy Liebknecht or an unsullied Harden. “Germany was inebriated with a sense of its mental grandeur and moral pulchritude. Now moral pulchritude is like a forest flower. It can not stand the fierce glare of publicity; you can not handle it as you would handle sausages and dye and fertilizer. Observe how the German military party is advertising its moral pulchritude--one hundred per cent, pure, blue ribbon, _spurlos versenkt_, honest-to-God morality!--the kind that made hell famous. “I don't blame than at all. How would any one know that they had it if they did not advertise it? “It is easy to accept the hot-air treatment for common sense--easy even for sober-minded men. The cocaine habit is not more swiftly acquired and brings a like sense of comfort and exhilaration. Slowly the Germans yielded to its sweet inducement. They began to believe that they were supermen--the chosen people; they thanked God that they were not like other men. Their first crime was that of grabbing everything in the heaven of holy promise. It would appear that those clever Prussians had arranged with St. Peter for all the reserved seats--nothing but standing room left Heaven was to be a place exclusively for the lovers of frankfurters and sauerkraut and Limburger cheese. “God was altogether their God. Of course! Was He not a member of the firm of Hohenzollern & Krupp? And, being so, other races were a bore and an embarrassment. Would He not gladly be rid of them? Certainly. Other races were God's enemies, and therefore German enemies. So it became the right and duty of the Germans to reach out and possess the earth and its fulness. The day had arrived. There was nothing in the world but Germans and enemies and loot.