'4 
Land & Water 
June 20, 1918- 
found in no other civilised nation. "Whoever cannot prevail 
himself to approve from the bottom of his heart the sinkmg 
of the LusUania " saj-s Pastor Baumgarten, "whoever cannot 
conquer his sense of the gigantic cruelty to unnumbered 
innocent victims and give himself up to honest delight at 
this victorious exploit of German defensive powcr--At»t we 
judge to be no true German." What words could declare 
more plainly that a cruel instinct is native; to the German 
mind ? They reveal in a flash the foul ethos out of which 
the German dream of world-dominion has arisen. We see 
once more the cruel face suddenly disengage itself from the 
futile mass of words and theories which are offered as the 
explanation of the war. 
The " true German " as he is here depicted by Baumgarten 
is none other than the human-wolf, the genius of the German 
military State, the common source ahke of her poHtical 
philosophy, of the systematic tortures inflicted on defenceless 
prisoners "of war, and of a thousand other barbarities on the 
greater or the lesser scale. It is true that unless there were 
some Germans who are ashamed of these things Pastor Baum- 
garten would not have found it necessary to address such an 
appeal to his audience. Let us take what comfort we can 
from the thought. The words were uttered tliree years ago, 
and events have since proved that the comfort to be thus 
extracted from them is by no means great ! 
Such are the conclusions which await us when we translate 
the meaning of the war from its political into its human 
equivalent. As in the narrower fields of family and social 
relationships, so in the wide and immensely confusing regions 
of world- pohtics we come at last to the decisive factor of 
personal characteristics. Whatever principle may be an- 
nounced as final for the government of mankind — democracy 
or autocracy. State organisation or individual freedom — 
behind them all hes the ultimate question of the kind of 
people by whom, and for whom, the principles are to be applied. 
Had the choice to be made, a bad system administered by 
good men would always be preferable to a good system admin- 
istered by the evil-minded. And wherever human interests 
are at- stake, the worst form of the evil mind is the cruel 
mind. Hence we frame the question wrongly when we ask 
what would happen if the world w(^re ruled by German 
methods. We should ask rather how the world would fare 
if it were ruled by Germans. According as we frame the 
question in the one way or the other the answer will come 
out with an immense difference. As to German methods in 
general we do well to keep an open mind ; but always with 
the reservation that under no circumstances whatsoever will 
we suffer them to be applied to us by the German as we have 
come to know him during the last four j'cars. 
What the German may be within his own borders is not in 
question ; let him be what he claims to be. It is as an inter- 
national person that we have to dp with him ; and here his 
character stands out clearly defined. He is essentially 
cruel ; he has the qualities which' derive from cruelty — 
cunning, treachery, fraud ; untrustworthy to the last degree ; 
a bad neighbour ; a dangerous partner in the work of civiUsa- 
tion. This is the mark he wears on his forehead — stamped 
there b}' his own act, and frankly reproduced in many a 
portrait he has drawn of himself. So long as the mark 
remains he stands condemned as an international person, 
and neither his valour, his skill, his prudence, his know- 
ledge, nor any other good quality that may be assigned 
him, will induce mankind to submit to his ascendancy. But 
for this he would have had a fair chance of realising his 
dream of world- dominion. As it is, he has none. 
Along with the virtues 
which have brought him 
to the front he has re- 
tained, and apparently 
cultivated, the one vice 
which effectively puts him 
out of court as a claimant 
to the leadership of civil- 
isation ; and this it is 
which leaves him faced 
with the hopeless alterna- 
tive of subduing by force 
a world firmly resolved 
never to accept him. Even 
if he were to repent to- 
morrow — and who can say 
he will not ? — confidence 
would be slow in return- 
ing. We should fear 
reversion to the original 
type. And rightly so ; for 
the cruelty he has shown 
is neither temporary nor 
superficial. It is too firmly embedded in the German State 
to be got rid of in a day. ^ , t • 1 
The Germans know this. Von Freytag Loringhovens 
book, to which I have already referred, betrays the know- 
ledge on every page. He sees that Germany has gone too 
far to retreat; her pact with cruelty is irrevocable; her 
methods cannot be changed. She must abide by the issue ; 
she must see the thing through to the end, and having 
finished this war to her satisfaction, must arm to the teeth 
for the next. And doubtless, from his own point of view. 
Loringhoven is right. But his vision is not untroubled ; 
nor is that of liis countrymen. There is a coumn, published 
daily in the Times, under the heading Through German 
Eye^ " Reading between the lines of tliis record it is not 
hard to guess what many of these German eyes are looking 
at. They are looking at Nemesis, which they pretend not 
to see. Macbctli did the like. _ • ^ • 
When German^' launched her great offensive against man- 
kind she did so with clear alternatives in view: World- 
dominion or Downfall. One of the secrets of the extra- 
ordinary vigour with which she has maintained the contest 
lies in the fafct that she has kept both alternatives steadi y 
before her mind. She has seen cleariy that Downfall would 
be the certain consequence of failure to achieve her aim, 
the aim itself being of such a nature as to bnng upon her 
the lasring hatred of the worid. This is the alternative 
which evil has always to face. It provokes forces which are 
vowed to its destruction. At this point Germany has never 
suffered herself to be under a moment's illusion. She has 
reasoned in terms of defeat as well as of victory, has reahsed 
what each would involve, and has conducted the war with 
the desperate energy of a mind which knows that everything 
is at stake. She has schooled herself in contemplating 
downfall as well as in dreaming of world-dominion. 
By taking the initiative on these terms Germany has 
imposed them upon ourselves. For us also Downfall is the 
only alternative to victory. This has seldom been stated 
with the plainness it demands. Even the few thinkers and 
writers among the AUies who have had the courage— and it 
has required no Httle courage— to open the eyes of the pubhc 
to what defeat would involve have generally stopped short 
at exhibiting only one side of the picture. They have told 
us what it is that would be defeated— to wit, democracy, 
and all that democracy involves. But the need is far greater 
that we should fully realise i£'hat it is that would be victorious. ■ 
Cruelty would have won ; cruelty would have become a 
dominant power, a principle in the government of mankind ; 
not the cruelty which is a mere bestial instinct, powerless 
before the higher intelligence of man— though it would not 
have lost its bestial character— but cruelty reinforced by 
human reason and the resources of science, cruelty in full 
command of the very means that were intended to break its 
power. Never mind, for the moment, what would be de- 
feated. Think what would be- victorious : read the new 
worid situation in the positive terms of the victory of the 
wolf and not alone in the negative terms of the shepherd's 
defeat. Who can doubt that this would be a "downfall'^ 
such as mankind has never seen ? 
It would be no false reading of history to say that the 
essential task on which mankind has been engaged since the 
very dawn of civilisation has been this same battle with 
the' wolf. Cruelty lias always been seeking to dominate the 
worid, and would have dominated it long ago but for the 
fight put up against it bv brave men— under the leadership, 
as some people think, 'of that Good Shepherd who has 
left on record what he 
thought of the runaways. 
In one shape or another, 
now as a world-power 
threatening human liberty, 
now as some inhuman 
social creed, cruelty has 
never failed to provide the 
warrior and the reformer 
with their characteristic 
tasks. How often have 
they broken his jaws and 
plucked the prey out of 
his teeth ! ' Surely they do 
Christianity a wrong who 
say that it has failed 1 
These are among its 
mightiest acts, its most 
splendid achievements, but 
for which the world would 
long since have sunk back 
into the savagery from, 
which it emerged. 
The Allies : Typical Faces 
French Official 
