versity expressed any opinion
in his academic lectures unfavourable to modern Germany, he would be
immediately _denunziert_ to the State authorities by his own students.
Should he publish such opinions in book form, of course the process of
cashiering him would be simpler. Germans do not desire the truth so far
as their own country is concerned; they do not will the truth; they will
_Deutschland ueber alles_, and all information, knowledge, or propaganda
contrary to their will is prohibited. If space permitted I could mention
numerous cases in which famous professors have been treated like
schoolboys by the German State--their stern father and master.]

When a German conscript enters the army he takes the _Fahneneid_ (oath
on, and to, the flag), which binds him to defend the Fatherland with
bayonet and bullet. In like manner it may be said that German professors
are bound by the _Staatseid_ either to discreet silence, or to employ
their intellectual pop-guns in defending Germany. That these pop-guns
fire colossal untruths, innuendoes, word-twistings, and such like
missiles, giving out gases calculated to stupefy and blind honest
judgments, will become painfully evident in the course of our
considerations.

That any and every German obeys the impulse to defend his country is
just and praiseworthy; but in our search for truth we are compelled to
note the fact that German professors are merely intellectual soldiers
fighting for Germany. Without departing from the truth by one jot or
tittle, readers may even call them "outside clerks" of the German
Foreign Office, or the "ink-slingers" under the command of the German
State.

These premises have been laid down _in extenso_ because some fifty books
will be discussed in this work, which emanate from German universities.
A neutral reader may retort: You also are not impartial, for you are an
Englishman! Having anticipated the question, the author ventures to give
an answer. If he could make a destructive attack on Britain's
policy--the attack would be made without the least hesitation. Such an
attack, if proved to the hilt, would bring any man renown, and in the
worst case no harm. But if a German professor launched an attack, based
upon incontrovertible facts, against Bethmann-Hollweg and Germany's
policy, that professor would be ruined in time of peace and in all
probability imprisoned, or sent to penal servitude in time of war.

Nothing which the present author could wri