The Drama of Three Hundred and Sixty Five Days/The German Tower of Babel
THE GERMAN TOWER OF BABEL
For the credit of human nature we feel compelled,
in sight of such enormities, to go back to
Mr. Maeterlinck's theory that invisible powers
of evil are using man for the execution of devilish
designs. But if so, they have had no mercy on
their creatures. We read that when, in fear of
another flood, not trusting the promises of the
Almighty, the children of Noah began to build a
Tower of Babel, the Lord sent a confusion of
tongues among them to bring their design to
destruction. The excuses the Germans have
offered for their barbarities suggest a confusion
of intellect that can only lead to a like result.
Has the world ever before listened to such whirlwind
logic?
When a German submarine has sunk a British merchantman and left her crew to perish we have been told that she was performing a legitimate act of war. But when a British merchantman has mounted a gun in order to defend herself, she has been said to violate the law of nations. When British battleships have blockaded German ports they have been trying to starve sixty-five millions of German people. But when German submarines have attempted to blockade British ports by drowning a thousand passengers of many nations on a British liner, they have been executing a just revenge. When a neutral nation in Europe has supplied foodstuffs and materials of war to Germany, she has been doing an act of simple humanity. But when the United States has supplied foodstuffs and materials of war to Great Britain she has been breaking the laws of her neutrality. When a brutal German officer has shot a British civilian in a railway train he has committed a justifiable homicide and become a proper person for promotion. But when a Belgian civilian has killed a German soldier who violated his daughter before his eyes he has been guilty of assassination and quite properly shot at sight. When Germany has refused to honour her name to a "scrap of paper" she has been a holy martyr obeying a law of necessity. But when England has honoured hers she has been a holy humbug, whose hypocrisy deserved to be exposed. Therefore God punish England! Above all, when God has crowned the arms of Germany with success on the battlefield, his most Christian Majesty, William the Pious, has always been with Him. Therefore God bless the Kaiser!
"Foreseeing my death," said Schopenhauer, "I make this confession, that I despise the German nation because of its infinite stupidity^ and I blush to belong to it."