ax collector in some distant province.
We know now, from letters that have been found, that the German soldiers
in France carried in their pockets a description by the German historian
Curtius of the triumphal procession along the Appian Way, when the
Roman conquerors came home loaded with loot. These skillful German
plotters printed at the bottom of Curtius's description the statement
that each German soldier must look forward to a similar return from
London, Paris and Brussels to march through the streets of Munich and
Berlin.
What a dream was this German dream! What treasures were to be brought
into Berlin! What marbles and bronzes of Rodin stolen from Paris! At
last Berlin was to own beautiful paintings, for the treasures of the
Louvre were to be the Kaiser's.
Never was there such a dream dreamed by peasants who soon were to become
princes and kings and patricians. The German had exchanged the rye bread
of 1913 for the "fog bank" of 1918; had given up German beer to grasp
only empty, breaking bubbles. But it was a great dream while it lasted.
In pursuance of his hope he sacrificed three million German boys, left
dead in the fields of Flanders and France. He sent home four million
German cripples. He filled the land with vast armies of widows and
orphans.
It could not have been otherwise. There has never been, and never will
be, but one world city--Rome; and there has never been but one
world-emperor--Caesar Augustus. There is to be one universal kingdom--and
that is the kingdom of God, the kingdom of love, justice, peace and
good-will. The German has been pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp.
A world-kingdom will come, but no Kaiser will rule over that empire of
love. In that world-parliament all the races shall be represented as
equals; then the earth that has long been a battle-field shall become an
Eden garden, where all are patriots towards the world-kingdom, and
scholars towards the intellect, and self-sufficing towards the family,
and obedient towards their God.
3. German Superiority a Myth That Has Exploded
Several years before the great war began a Dutch humorist wrote a play
on German megalomania. He portrayed a German schoolroom in Prussia.
Thirty or forty embryonic Prussians are at the desks and a Prussian
schoolmaster is in the chair.
"Children, what is the greatest country in the world?"
All shouted vociferously, "Germany!"
"What is the greatest city in the world?"
"Berlin!"
"Who is
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