on with the German-American
Lutherans in the United States, who exerted their influence to the
utmost against the election of President Wilson, taking their
instructions indirectly from the German Foreign Office.

The state of affairs in the German churches is so different from
anything on the other side of the Atlantic, and in Great Britain,
that it is almost as difficult to make people in England understand
war-preaching ministers as it is to make them comprehend
war-teaching schoolmasters.

My description of the poisoning by hate songs of the child mind of
Germany at its most impressionable age came as a shock to many of
my readers. But the hate songs of the children are not as fierce
as the hate hymns and prayers of the pastors. Do the public here
realise that of the original Zeppelin fund hundreds of thousands of
marks were subscribed in churches and chapels, and that models of
Zeppelins have formed portions of church decorations at festivals?

The pastors of the Prussian State Church are in one important
respect the exact opposite of Martin Luther. He was thoroughly
independent in spirit and rebelled against authority; they are
abjectly submissive to it. As with the professor, so with the
pastor, it is no mere accident that he is a puppet-tool of the
State. The German Government leaves nothing to chance, and
realising to the fullest the importance of docile and unified
subjects both for interior rule and exterior conquest, it
deliberately and artfully regulates those who create public opinion.

There are some Lutheran pastors in Germany who work for an ideal,
who detest the propagation of hate. Why, one may naturally ask, do
they not cry out against such a pernicious practice? They cannot,
for they are muzzled. When a pastor enters this Church of which
the Supreme War Lord is the head, his first oath is unqualified
allegiance to his King and State. If he keeps his oath he can
preach no reform, for the State, being a perfect institution, can
have no flaw. If he breaks his oath, which happens when he raises
his voice in the slightest criticism, he is silenced. This means
that he must seek other means of earning a livelihood--a thing
almost impossible in a land where training casts a man in a rigid
mould. Thus these parsons have their choice between going on
quietly with their work and being nonentities in the public eye or
bespattering the non-Germanic section of the world with the mire of
hate. I