riumph of materialism, the
respect for the accomplished fact, the mockery of the noblest sentiments
as though they were merely sonorous and absurd phrases, the reversal
of moral values . . . a philosophy of bandits which pretended to be
the last word of progress, and was no more than a return to despotism,
violence, and the barbarity of the most primitive epochs of history.

While he was longing for the suppression of the representatives of
this tendency, he would not, therefore, demand the extermination of the
German people.

"This nation has great merits jumbled with bad conditions inherited
from a not far-distant, barbarous past. It possesses the genius of
organization and work, and is able to lend great service to humanity.
. . . But first it is necessary to give it a douche--the douche of
downfall. The Germans are mad with pride and their madness threatens
the security of the world. When those who have poisoned them with the
illusion of universal hegemony have disappeared, when misfortune has
freshened their imagination and transformed them into a community of
humans, neither superior nor inferior to the rest of mankind, they will
become a tolerant people, useful . . . and who knows but they may even
prove sympathetic!"

According to Tchernoff, there was not in existence to-day a more
dangerous nation. Its political organization was converting it into a
warrior horde, educated by kicks and submitted to continual humiliations
in order that the willpower which always resists discipline might be
completely nullified.

"It is a nation where all receive blows and desire to give them to those
lower down. The kick that the Kaiser gives is transmitted from back to
back down to the lowest rung of the social ladder. The blows begin
in the school and are continued in the barracks, forming part of the
education. The apprenticeship of the Prussian Crown Princes has always
consisted in receiving fisticuffs and cowhidings from their progenitor,
the king. The Kaiser beats his children, the officer his soldiers, the
father his wife and children, the schoolmaster his pupils, and when the
superior is not able to give blows, he subjects those under him to the
torment of moral insult."

On this account, when they abandoned their ordinary avocations, taking
up arms in order to fall upon another human group, they did so with
implacable ferocity.

"Each one of them," continued the Russian, "carries on his back the
marks of kicks,