orals and reason and all the limits of ordinary
life, a kind of supernatural state before which one can only bow without
discussion;

2. _Germany is Germany_, that is to say without common measure with the
rest of nations. The laws which apply to others do not apply to her, and
the rights which she arrogates to herself to violate Right appertain to
her alone. Thus she can, without crime, tear up written promises, betray
sworn oaths, violate the neutrality of peoples which she has pledged
herself to defend. But she claims in return the right to find, in the
nations which she outrages, "chivalrous adversaries," and that they
should not be so, that they should dare to defend themselves by all the
means and the arms that remain to them, she proclaims a crime!...

One recognizes there indeed the interested teaching of your Prussian
masters! Great minds of Germany, I do not doubt your sincerity, but you
are no longer capable of seeing the truth. Prussian Imperialism has
crushed down over your eyes and conscience, its spiked helmet.

"_Necessity knows no law._" ... Here is the eleventh commandment, the
message that you bring to the universe today, sons of Kant!... We have
heard it more than once in history: it is the famous doctrine of Public
Safety, mother of heroisms and crimes. Every nation has recourse to it
in the hour of danger, but the greatest are those who defend against it
their immortal soul. Fifteen years have passed since the famous trial
which saw a single innocent man opposed to the force of the State.
Fifteen years have passed since we French affronted and shattered the
idol of public safety, when it threatened, as our Peguy says, "the
eternal safety of France."

Listen to him, whom you have killed; listen to a hero of the French
conscience, writers who have the keeping of the conscience of Germany.

"_Our enemies of that time_," wrote Charles Peguy, "_spoke the language
of the_ raison d'Etat, _of the temporal safety of the people and the
race. But we, by a profound Christian movement, by a revolutionary
effort, at unity with traditional Christianity, aimed at no less than
attaining the heights of sacrifice, in our anxiety for the eternal
salvation of this people. We did not wish to place France in the
position of having committed the unpardonable sin._"

You do not trouble yourselves about that, thinkers of Germany. You
bravely give your blood to save the mortal life, but do not bother about
the life ete