Pro Aris
human race to the riddle of the world—this light of the spirit more necessary to souls than that of the sun.
Whoever destroys this work, murders more than a man; he murders the purest soul of a race. His crime is inexpiable, and Dante would have it punished with an eternal agony, eternally renewed. We who repudiate the vindictive spirit of so cruel a genius, do not hold a people responsible for the crimes of a few. The drama which unfolds itself before our eyes, and whose almost certain dénouement will be the crushing of the German hegenomy, is enough for us.
What brings it home to us most nearly is that not one of those who constitute the moral and intellectual élite of Germany—that hundred noble spirits, and those thousands of brave hearts of which no great nation was ever destitute—not one really suspects the crimes of his Government; the atrocities committed in Flanders, in the north and in the east of France during the two or three first weeks of the war; or (one can safely wager) the voluntary devastations of the towns of Belgium and the ruin of Rheims. If they came to look at the reality, I know that many of them would weep with grief and shame; and of all the shortcomings of Prussian Imperialism, the worst and
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