, may make
their pilgrimage to Ammergau and share the thrill passing along the
crowded benches when the children's voices are heard, and they enter,
waving their palm branches, that those who watch their beautiful
counterfeit may recall, with imagination vivid like a child's, another
procession of joyous children, nineteen hundred years ago.
The rest of mankind would be the poorer if it were cut off for ever from
some of the things which Germany has given and might again give to the
world in the realm of thought--in science and literature--and in music;
things which have added and may again add to the knowledge and to the
beauty of life. But let there be no mistake. Such a future is possible
only if the powers which are dominant in Germany are utterly destroyed;
but that is not enough, there must be a regeneration of the German
people. The alternative for Germany must be either exclusion from
intercourse with the rest of mankind save those who desire to share in
her crimes, and who will also share in her outlawry, or a change of
spirit and of purpose in the nation. If such a change comes, we "dare be
known to think" that the renewal of friendly relations with the German
people is an object we desire to attain.
For us, too, comes the double warning. Strange voices are already heard
among us; some seem like echoes of the German spirit we are fighting to
exorcise, others of that anarchic spirit still more fatal that makes a
lawless democracy the most deadly foe of liberty and ordered progress.
If we in our turn make self-interest, regardless of the rights of
others, our guide, find in hatred, envy and jealousy our stimulus to
action, victory will confer no lasting blessing and the end of this War
will bring no real peace. The recognition of dangers threatened must be
for us the incentive to greater effort, with plans more carefully
thought out and clearer understanding of the true goal we are striving
to reach. Keeping our highest ideals always before us, labouring
steadily day by day, moving forward step by step, though the way may be
long, we may look with confidence to their attainment.
The earth moves onward, revolving in its course, bearing with it our
older generation towards the inevitable night; it may be to the utter
darkness where "there is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom,"
or, "as the holy sages once did sing," when that night comes, "Creation"
may "be widen'd in man's view," revealing the infin
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