"This means that we go forth to war as Christians, precisely as Christians, as we Germans understand Christianity; it means that we have God on our side.... Can the Russians, the French, the Serbians, the English, say this? No; not one of them. Only we Germans can say it.... If God is for us who can be against us? It is enough for us to be a part of God.... A nation"--Germany--"which is God's seed corn for the future.... Germany is the centre of God's plans for the world.... That glorious feat of arms forty-four years ago"--the Battle of Sedan--"gives us courage to believe that the German soul is the world's soul; that God and Germany belong to one another."
These are the concluding words of the Reverend Lehmann's book _About the German God_:
"Oh, that the German God may permeate the world! Oh, that the eternal victory may blossom before the God of the German soul!"
It will not do to slight the Herr Pastor Job Rump, lic., Doctor, of Berlin. Hearken a moment to a word or two from one of Doctor Rump's published pamphlets:
"A corrupt world, fettered in monstrous sin, shall, by the will of God, be healed by the German nature.... Ye"--the Germans--"are the chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the peculiar people."
A learned and no doubt a pious professor, Herr G. Roethe, is credited with this modest claim:
"While other nations are born, ripen and grow old, the Germans alone possess the gift of rejuvenescence."
And so on and so forth, for two hundred and thirty-four pages of _Hurrah and Hallelujah_. The run of the contents is quite up to sample. None of us can object to these reverend gentlemen seeking to walk with God; what we do object to is their undertaking to lead Him.
So far as I can tell, Doctor Bang has not overlooked a single bet. He makes out a complete case; and, what is more, in so doing he relies not upon his own conclusions, but upon the avowed utterances of distinguished German savants, clergymen and versifiers.
These, then, are the spoken thoughts of civilian leaders of our enemy. If the leaders believe these things their followers must also believe them; must believe, with the Reverend Lehmann and the Reverend Vorwerk, that God is a German God, and should properly be so addressed by a worshipper upon his knees, since one prayer begins "O German God!"; must believe, with Von Bernhardi--who spoke of "the miserable life of all small states"--that "to allow to the weak the same right of existence as to the strong, vigorous nation means presumptuous encroachment upon the natural laws of development"; and with Treitschke, that "the small nations have no right to existence and ought to be swallowed up"; and with Lasson, that "It is moral, inasmuch as it is reasonable, that the small states, in spite of treaties, should become the prey of the strongest"; and must believe that to Prussia was appointed the task of curing the whole world, America included, of what--according to the Prussian ideal--ails it.