the highest duty of intelligent German professors like yourself is not
to attempt the hopeless task of converting the rest of the world to an
approval of the methods of the German Government, but rather to use your
whole influence to establish a German Government which shall have a
decent respect for the opinions of the rest of the world, and shall
restore Germany to the place it used to have among civilised nations.
Your greatest enemy is not the Russian, nor the French, nor the British
Government. They might defeat you in war, but they never could take away
your honour. Your greatest enemy is the Government which has dragged the
fair name of Germany in the mire of dishonour, shocking the moral
instincts of the whole world by acts no other civilised country would
think of committing. Your greatest enemy is the Government which stifles
your individual development by making you the obedient tools of the
"State," which smothers your free thought by a muzzled press under
police control, which makes your learned men ridiculous in the eyes of
the world by training them to blind, unthinking support of the
Government and credulous belief in whatever falsehoods it chooses to
impose upon you for military and political purposes, which hurls you
into a disastrous war without your knowledge or consent, and which
brings down upon you the contempt of the whole world for crimes you
would not yourselves commit, but which you must forsooth defend "for the
good of the State."

Americans believe that a Government which provokes a war and deceives
its people to secure their support, should be destroyed; that a
Government which breaks its treaties and murders an innocent neutral
nation, shooting innocent hostages to prevent sniping by those whose
homes are violently attacked, should be destroyed; that a Government
which systematically and repeatedly bombards unfortified towns and
villages, killing hundreds of innocent women and children, should be
destroyed; that a Government which torpedoes unarmed passenger ships,
drowning helpless men, women, and children by the thousand in shameful
defiance of law and every instinct of humanity, should be destroyed;
that a Government which in cold blood executes a woman nurse like Miss
Cavell should be destroyed; that a Government which ruthlessly destroys
works of art and monuments of civilisation and levies crushing
indemnities on captured cities, in defiance of the well-established laws
of war, shoul