England would do. And she
expected American sympathy.

Summarized thus, the Prussianizing of Germany seems fantastic;
fantastic, too, and not of the real world, the utter credulity, the
abject, fervent faith of the hypnotized young men. Yet here are a young
German's recent words. I have seen his letter, written to a friend of
mine. He was tutor to my friend's children. Delightful, of admirable
education, there was no sign in him of hypnotism. He went home to fight.
There he inhaled afresh the Prussian fumes. Presently his letter came,
just such a letter as one would wish from an ardent, sincere, patriotic
youth--for the first pages. Then the fumes show their work and he
suddenly breaks out in the following intellectual vertigo:

"Individual life has become worthless; even the uneducated men feel
that something greater than individual happiness is at stake, and the
educated know that it is the culture of Europe. By her shameless lies
and cold-blooded hypocrisy England has forfeited her claim to the
title of a country of culture. France has passed her prime anyway,
your country is too far behind in its development, the other countries
are too small to carry on the heritage of Greek culture and Christian
faith--the two main components of every higher culture to-day; so _we_
have to do it, and we _shall_ do it--even if we and millions more of
us should have to die."

There you have it! A cultivated student, a noble nature, a character
of promise, Prussianized, with millions like him, into a gibbering
maniac, and flung into a caldron of blood! Could tragedy be deeper?
Goethe's young Wilhelm Meister thus images the ruin of Hamlet's mind
and how it came about: "An oak tree is planted in a costly vase, which
should only have borne beautiful flowers in its bosom; the roots
expand and the vase is shattered." Thus has Prussia, planted in
Germany, cracked the Empire.

XI

And now we are ready for the Prussian Creed. The following is an
embodiment, a composite statement, of Prussianism, compiled sentence
by sentence from the utterances of Prussians, the Kaiser and his
generals, professors, editors, and Nietzsche, part of it said in cold
blood, years before this war, and all of it a declaration of faith now
being ratified by action:

"We Hohenzollerns take our crown from God alone. On me the Spirit of
God has descended. I regard my whole ... task as appointed by heaven.
Who opposes me I shall crush to pieces. Nothing