are responsible for the worship of might in Germany, for German Militarism, I must at the same time say here that, looking again impartially upon the question, it seems to me that the direct responsibility for this war rests more heavily upon the German people, upon the German nation, than upon anybody else.
In order to understand this, let me first of all here give the history of German Militarism in Europe. After the Reformation and the Thirty Years War, the Germanic nations, the people of the Germanic race with their moral fibre, with their intense love of righteousness and their intense hatred of unrighteousness, hatred of all untidiness and disorder, the German people, with Militarism as a sword in their hand, became the rightful guardian of civilisation in Europe. In other words, the responsibility for putting order and tidiness (Zucht und Ordnung) in Europe; in fact, the moral hegemony so to speak of Europe came into the hands of the German people. After the Reformation, Frederick the Great, like Cromwell in England, had to take up and use the sword of German Militarism to put order and tidiness in Europe and he succeeded in putting order and tidiness at any rate in the Northern part of Europe. Now see what happened after Frederick the Great's death. His successor did not know how to use the sword of German Militarism in order to guard and protect the civilisation of Europe; in fact, he was unfit to hold the moral hegemony of Europe. The result was, the whole of Europe, even the courts in
