GERMANY'S COLOSSAL CONCEIT

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 247, 6 July 1918, Page 6

GERMANY'S COLOSSAL CONCEIT

n The Germans claim to ,surpas v all other nations in all department ■- of human progress and they hav< '- fully persuaded themselves tha r, their pre-eminence finds its hishes i expression in their scientific achieve ~ ments. This audacious prctensioi s to world-supremacy in science i: t discussed in a well-reasoned artich - contributed by "Reader" which wit 3 be found in another part of this i issue. "Header" weighs the Gerniat ; claim in' the balance and finds il r wanting. He marshals a convinchvp . array of facts which knock it tc i pieces. This impudent assertion oi ! intellectual superiority is onlv one . aspect of that colossal conceit ol > Germany which is in a large mca- ■ sure responsible for the present . war. By a thoroughly organised sys- [ tern of self-advertising the Germans j have convinced themselves, and al- , most succeeded in convincing the i world, that they are specially com- , missioned and endowed by Provii dence for leadership in pliilosophv, i science, literature, and art. Their ! educational methods have been spoci- . ally devised for the purpose of propagating this idea. "Wc are the greatest"—this false notion has been hammered into their minds for years in the most persistent manner,' and the strange thing is that before the war many British scientists, philosophers, and theologians became accustomed to pay a quite unwarrantable amount of deference to German authorities. In Biblical criticism, for instance, a remarkably large number of our w-riters felt'it necessary to support nearly every opinion they expressed by a quotation from some German book. But the war opened our eyes to the true meaning of German Kultur. and Ave now see how flimsy arc the foundations on which its demand for the world's homage is based. Pnofessok Maurice Millioud, of the University of Lausanne, states the position quite fairly when he asserts that "few of the German systems of philosophy of the second half of the nineteenth century have attained any high position. They are the outcome of creditable scholarship, wrought by well-read men, of whom some, like Wundt, are accepted authorities." The touch of real genius is lacking. Yet these second-rate philosophers, backed up by historians, economists, and sociologists, have filled the minds of their countrymen with the idea that they arc a race of supermen, whose ocstiny is world dominion. These leaders of thought have pandered to the will of the Prussian military caste, and have made it their business "to*accumulatc facts, invent arguments, and work out schemes for adapting science, history, and philosophy to meet the needs of this fierce ambition." This form of intellectual madness reaches its climax in the writings of the renegade, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose exaltation, of the German I. race is exaggerated to such an amazing degree that it is wonderful how even the most dull-witted German can read it without laughing. Referring to Chamberlain's volume, Professor Millioud writes: "After this book, the commercial success of which was prodigious, nothing really remained to be said. The German mind had appropriated to itself the universe; all that remained was for the German sword to complete the work." The Germans have been convinced by professors, politicians, and Prussian swashbucklers that they have a divine right to rule the world. Their teachers even go so far as to declare that God is German. This is the opinion of Pnofbssor Kaftan, who tells his deluded countrymen that the German State is' a sort of embodiment of God, and that German Kultur is the expression of His soul. Is not this sheer madness'; If the products of the German mind are the highest achievements or the world's- intellect then it is indeed a mad world that wo live in. .