The Dominion SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1917. THE NEMESIS OF THE GERMANPEOPLE'S DOCILITY

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 81, 29 December 1917, Page 6

The Dominion SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1917. THE NEMESIS OF THE GERMANPEOPLE'S DOCILITY

It- has been said that ' your enemy becomes a mystery that must be solved." A largo number of writers have been and are impressed with such a sentiment, and already a number of books have been written to explain.tho Gorman character, and the articles in our reviews and magazines'aro legion. Every month brings forth some fresh contribution to tho question. One of the most recent books on this much-discussed subject is from tho pen of Mr. Edward Holmes, the well-known authority on English education, whose bold and original critical books have been commended by ThcTimes, The Saturday ■ Review, and other journals of high repute. This latest study of German character by Mr. Holmbs bears the title, The Nemesis of Docility, and is a terrific indictment of tho wrong methods of training and governing a people in Germany.. It .used to be said by ill-in-formed historical writers that it was the'German'schoolmaster that won tho Franco-German: War of 1870. Mr. Holmes does not deny that the German schoolmaster.has helped the Germans to gain, a' part of vtho world.- But he charges the schoolmaster and' the methods of the schoolmaster, pursued by the German rulers with being.the cause of the moral ruin of the German people; and he asks throughout his book, "What shall it profit a nation if it gain the world and. lose, its own 'soul 2"' Mr: Holmes finds the bane :bf the German people in their do-cility—their-.servility to those who govern them—a docility that has been produced by the cane of the schoolmaster and by the iron laws of their autocratic rulers, This docility, this readiness to obey, this eagerness to submit to authority, this reluctance to assume responsibility, I has destroyed tho moral , fibre of the German people and made them clay in the'hand's of the unscrupulous, ambitious, and aggressive military caste that holds supreme power in Germany. ■ ' '•''-■',-» In the Faust legends we,/read of the man who sold himself to the devil in order to get gold, or greatness,' This is the tragic story of tho German people. They have been 'trained to surrender themselves to their autocratic masters, and • they •have done so, believing that by so doing they would become rich and great and p_owcrfula-s a nation. They have thus in a' sense sold themselves to the devil. According- to Mr. Holmes, the curse. of thd German people is their se.rvile surrender of themselves as moral,, beings to their ■p'olitioal and military masters. They 'have become -parts -of a; tremendous machine, and when this, machine is used either for commerce or' for w,ar, its power to crush foes is single 'in the history of the world.. Martin Luther' in his day wrote a book on .the Babylonish Gantivitu of the' Church, in- which he affirmed •that'a-corrupt ecclesiastical institution that then obtained: in Germany kept the people in slavery from their birth to-their grave. -Something like this has been going on in Prussianised Germany for two or three generations. The Germans are the most law-ridden people on the face of the earth. "Our laws," saysHERR Schiffer, a National Liberal, "would fill whole libraries. Who can be sure as he lays himself down to slc.p at night that he is not transgressing some police regulation? 'From the cradle to the grave, law, justice, and the police accompany us at every step; nay, they look after us both for a few weeks before our birth and a few weeks after our .death." But this_ speaker is the voice of one crying in the wilderness alono. The .'mass of the people have accepted tho situation a murmur, and they are now , paying tho penalty. The State, which is the ruling military caste, has for. its end- power and still more power, and in pursuing this end moral considerations must be cast to the four winds of heaven. Pious Germans have been forced to speak of their State as a, non-moral magnitude, and the State in pursuing its supremo end may find it right to practise rapacity, perfiffy, and inhumanity, land the docile German citizen is taught that subservience to this order of things is to him true patriotism, and a high form _of moral good. This moral. insanity which sees in tho State's crimes a form of moral good has corrupted the Church ■of Martin Luther to-day. Pastor Baumgarten, ■ according to Mr. Archer's 'Gems of German Thought, went the length of saying: ''Whoever ca'Knot prevail upon himself to approve from the bottom pi his heart the sinking of the Lusitania, whoever cannot conquer his sense of the immonse cruelty tp unnumbered perfectly innocent victims . . _'. and give himself up to honest delight at this victorious exploit of German defensive power—him we judge to be no true German." To this low depth of moral degradation the so-called German Christian pulpit commands a docile people-to go. Two of the most arresting chapters in Mr. Hclmes's informing book are entitled "Deadened by Docility" and "Brutaliscd by Docility." They describe the mental and moral descent of the German people. They arc disciplined as children by autocratic schoolmasters. They enter the Army, and come under the iron rule of their superior officers—who belong to a different caste from their men. They leave the Army, and the übiquitous pressure of. the State . guides them in their social, economic, and political life. The Prussian is governed by an autocratic Landtag, which for generations has flouted the idea of democratic rule. The Reichstag, the Imperial Parliament of the Empire, is in theory democratic, but in practice as autocratic as the Prussian Landtag. The notorious Friedrick Naumann. before he wrote his MiUelKuropa, lamented tho political impotence of the people. He said:

The Gerinan Empire has two political forces—the Bundesrnt (tho German House of Lords, controlled by tho Kaisqr) and tho Reichstag, but of these forces tho ono is infinitely stronger than the other, for. the Bundesrnt can dissolvo the ReichsIng,'but tho Reichstag cannot dissolve tlie Diindesrat. .Somewhere in their pnlaco their delegates sit together in secret, and throw our resolutions into the waste-paper basket. But they demand of us that we shall accept their proposals. The highest freedom of the German people is thus the docile acceptance of the commands of their masters.

This destroys or weakens the power of individual action, and this weakness is seen in this war. The Germans must attack in close formation (and be mown down in masses), for attacks in open order draw upon individual courage and individual action, and the German soldier is weak in these qualities. This dragooning in docility explains also the unspeakable and awful savagery of the German soldier in ' this war. _ The Kaiser some years ago tola his soldiers to behave like Huns in China,, and they obeyed him. They were told to terrorise people by acts of "frightfulness" in this war, and they have done so. They have outraged women and murdered'Da-bes; they have destroyed churches and ruined monuments of antiquity and of art; they have looted houses and shops; they have slain the wounded and starved and tortured prisoners; they' murdered Red Cross workers and sunk Red Cross ships; they have poisoned wells and sent thousands of innocent travellers on passenger ships to. a watery grave. There is no offence in the calendar of-crime that has not been committed in this war by the docile servants of the Kaiser.and his v War Lords. But this docility towards a non-moral State has led to disaster in the moral nature of masses of the German people. The people before the war found a safety, yalvo in wild speculation and in immoral and criminal outbursts. Germany foryears has 'been the home of the materialistic philosophers, who gloried in the beast theory of human life; and who saw no spirit in man and no Infinite Spirit in tho universe. Berlin for years, says Price. Collier, has been "the most been-, tious and immoral city in Europe,' and he adds it has been the avowed policy of autocracies to atone for lack-of political freedom by lax regulation in regard to moral matters, and so , in the German capital provision was niade for drinking, gambling,'and other forms of vice more cheaply, than in other cities. For some years the "crimes of malicein Germany have been at a rate 200 times' greater than that of England and.Wales, and when. we. come to. "crimes of shame" the proportion is thirty-five times more. numerous in Germany than in England and Wales. Crimes of "shame" and "malice" and suicide amorfg young people have been increasing by leaps and: bounds, and ono of tho leading 'newspapers in Germany, commenting, on the criminal statistics- of 1915, deplores the "growing savagery of ,youths, both male and female. No "doubt the causes of crime are manifold, but among the chief causes is the non-moral State that deadens and brutalises the sense of moral responsibility in its subjects. The military casto of Germany has been guilty of many crimes, but perhaps its crime of crimes is the soul ruin that it has inflicted on its own people. The people, however, wero endowed with moral natures, arid could have refused to obey their masters, but they have willingly consented to their own undoing. A great English writer ha? described such a moral situation as we now face in Europe as another year draws to a close. "When-a dark human individual-has; filled, the measure of his wicked blockheadedisms, sins, and brutal miisancings, there are Gibbets provided, there are laws provided, and you can, in an articulate regular manner, hanjj him and finish him, to general satisfaction.- Nations,- -too, you may depend on it as certain, do require the same process, "and do infallibly pet it withal; Heaven's' justice, with written laws or, without, being the most indispensable, and the inevitablest thing I know of in this universe. Nothing without it; and it is sure to come." ■