"GERMANISM/' 



149 



slightest condemnation, even from ministers of religion.* 

 We are apt to think Homer's Achilles was a downright brute, 

 but what would he, or any other of the Homeric heroes, have 

 thought of the dastardly cowardice and refinement of cruelty 

 combined in sending women, children, old men, and captives 

 in war to go before their valiant (!) soldiers as a cover from the 

 enemy's weapons ? What would they have thought of aero- 

 plane expeditions to undefended towns, and the slaughter of 

 defenceless persons and even babies in their cots ? What would 

 they have thought of sinking unarmed vessels, full of unarmed 

 men, women, and children, and leaving the helpless creatures 

 to struggle for hours in the benumbing waters ? What would they 

 have thought of sinking hospital ships, full, not only of wounded 

 soldiers, but of doctors and nurses ministering to their needs ? 

 And, to go no further in the hideous catalogue of horrors, what 

 would the Homeric champions have thought of cutting down the 

 fruit trees in the land out of which they were about to be flung, and 

 which they ought never to have entered, in order to revenge them- 

 selves on the poorer class of inhabitants who had never done them 

 any harm ? Has not the Creator of heaven and earth warned us 

 that " a tree is known by its fruits " ? Yes, this terrific demoraliza- 

 tion of what was once, with all its faults, a great people ; this 

 degradation, in time of war, of the methods of conducting it for 

 centuries by peoples calling themselves Christian ; this appalling 

 downward plunge, even in times of peace, into depths of vice 

 and crime long unheard of, which Germany has undeniably 

 experienced — all this, and more beside, is due to the belittling 



* The Professors of Theology at BerHn, Munich, Halle, Hamburg, 

 Gottingen, Frankfort, and elsewhere (including the famous Professor 

 Harnack, so long idolized by our Germanizers here, and before whose un- 

 proved dicta Enghsh scholars have for some years been content to prostrate 

 themselves) have addressed a document to "Evangelical Christians" 

 which defends the atrocious and indescribably inhuman conduct displayed 

 by the Kaiser and his minions toward those under their heels. The organ 

 of the Swiss " Old Catholics," some little time back, quoted a Roman 

 Catholic publication in England, which insisted that " the Kaiserism and 

 MiUtarism of Prussia stands in open hostility to the Spirit of Christ," that 

 " the German method of carrying on warfare is in direct opposition to 

 the teaching of Christ," and that " its philosophy directly springs from 

 the divisive tendencies of the teaching of Luther." Unfortunately, 

 Austria, now the " eldest son of the Church," is as much concerned in this 

 anti-Christian outbreak as Germany, and the Pope himself dare not 

 contradict the savage ethics of the German Kaiser. 



