2
The Background of Germanism
Germans are an execrable people! They think and dream of nothing but chicanery. Their great joy consists in faultfinding, shrieking and threats. They brandish arms which are like barbed clubs; from their mouths instead of ordinary human speech, issue the rumbling of artillery and the clash of steel; their life is one of perpetual explosion. The German does not live on the heights; he avoids light, and from his hiding place he picks to pieces treaties, exercises his malign influence on newspaper articles, pores over maps, measures angles, and traces with gloating eagerness the lines of frontiers. To love their country is for them to despise, flout and insult every
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