ast of France during the two or three first weeks of the war; or
(one can safely wager) the voluntary devastations of the towns of
Belgium and the ruin of Rheims. If they came to look at the reality, I
know that many of them would weep with grief and shame; and of all the
shortcomings of Prussian Imperialism, the worst and the vilest is to
have concealed its crimes from its people. For by depriving them of the
means of protesting against those crimes, it has involved them for ever
in the responsibility; it has abused their magnificent devotion. The
intellectuals, however, are also guilty. For if one admits that the
brave men, who in every country tamely feed upon the news which their
papers and their leaders give them for nourishment, allow themselves to
be duped, one cannot pardon those whose duty it is to seek truth in the
midst of error, and to know the value of interested witnesses and
passionate hallucinations. Before bursting into the midst of this
furious debate upon which was staked the destruction of nations and of
the treasures of the spirit, their first duty (a duty of loyalty as much
as of common sense) should have been to consider the problems from both
sides. By blind loyalty and culpable trustfulness they have rushed head
foremost into the net which their Imperialism had spread. They believed
that their first duty was, with their eyes closed, to defend the honor
of their State against all accusation. They did not see that the noblest
means of defending it was to disavow its faults and to cleanse their
country of them....

I have awaited this virile disavowal from the proudest spirits of
Germany, a disavowal which would have been ennobling instead of
humiliating. The letter which I wrote to one of them, the day after the
brutal voice of Wolff's Agency pompously proclaimed that there remained
of Louvain no more than a heap of ashes, was received by the entire
elite of Germany in a spirit of enmity. They did not understand that I
offered them the chance of releasing Germany from the fetters of those
crimes which its Empire was forging in its name. What did I ask of them?
What did I ask of you all, finer spirits of Germany?--to express at
least a courageous regret for the excesses committed, and to dare to
remind unbridled power that even the Fatherland cannot save itself
through crime, and that above its rights are those of the human spirit.
I only asked for _one_ voice--a _single_ free voice.... None spoke.