Page:Great Speeches of the War.djvu/222

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188
T. P. O'Connor

those whom he represented foresaw the abyss of horror and ruin to which this gospel would lead; but the Socialists of Germany beat their heads in vain against the steel-clad fortress behind which the Kaiser, the Army, and Junkerdom lay entrenched,

I will endeavour to back up every assertion I may make, and give incontestible proof of what I have just said; we have been dealing with a nation drunk and mad with megalomania.

And the megalomania has been of the most pernicious form. Just as some insanities are gentle and harmless, and other insanities are homicidal, so this megalomania of Germany has been militarist, and therefore homicidal. It is now known that Germany has preached, and has, alas! given its fullest and most ardent faith to this new decalogue—Might is right; war is not only unavoidable, but desirable, moral, elevating, necessary to the sound spiritual and physical health and general progress of a nation. The world does not consist of separate races, with their right to individual self-development, but of a series of inferior races, all to be brought under the iron heel of German militarism, and under the spiritual domain of what is called German culture. What is the truth, in opposition to this claim, at once so arrogant and so ignorant?

The world has been divided by the divine and unerring hand of Nature into peoples who speak different tongues, profess different religions, the blood in whose veins comes from different sources, who dwell under different suns and till different earths. But the German soldier in his pickelhaube and the German professor in his spectacles come along, and declare Germany is wiser and more powerful than Nature. Nature deliberately created diversity; the Germans will substitute uniformity; and the uniformity means that every race, creed, and nation shall be all put into the German mould. The fool hath said in his heart, "There is no God"; the German hath said in his heart, "There is no truth or persistent or irresistible purpose in Nature which is of God."

The world has had different prophets, testifying to what is best in humanity throughout the ages; prophets of good, prophets of evil. The prophet whom the greatest part of civilized humanity follows to-day is Christ; the prophet whom the German soldier and professor put forth as the ideal is Napoleon. As Professor Cramb, a partial admirer of German methods, summed it up: Corsica has conquered Galilee. In