sion of the German people as a civilizing
force, and now they were despised by all other peoples as a brutal and
barbarous race, in spite of German music, German folk-songs, German art,
German sentiment. They had been abandoned by God, by the protecting hand
of the altes gutes Deutsches Gottes to whom many had prayed for comfort
and help in those years of war, in Protestant churches and Catholic
churches, with deep piety and childlike faith. What sins had they done
that they should be abandoned by God? The invasion of Belgium? That,
they argued, was a tragic necessity. Atrocities? Those were (they
believed) the inventions of their enemies. There had been stern things
done, terrible things, but according to the laws of war. Francs-tireurs
had been shot. That was war. Hostages had been shot. It was to save
German lives from slaughter by civilians. Individual brutalities, yes.
There were brutes in all armies. The U-boat war? It was (said the
German patriot) to break a blockade that was starving millions of German
children to slow death, condemning millions to consumption, rickets, all
manner of disease. Nurse Cavell? She pleaded guilty to a crime that was
punishable, as she knew, by death. She was a brave woman who took her
risk open-eyed, and was judged according to the justice of war, which is
very cruel. Poison-gas? Why not, said German soldiers, when to be gassed
was less terrible than to be blown to bits by high explosives? They had
been the first to use that new method of destruction, as the English
were the first to use tanks, terrible also in their destructiveness.
Germany was guilty of this war, had provoked it against peaceful
peoples? No! A thousand times no. They had been, said the troubled soul
of Germany, encompassed with enemies. They had plotted to close her in.
Russia was a huge menace. France had entered into alliance with Russia,
and was waiting her chance to grab at Alsace-Lorraine. Italy was ready
for betrayal. England hated the power of Germany and was in secret
alliance with France and Russia. Germany had struck to save herself. "It
was a war of self-defense, to save the Fatherland."

The German people still clung desperately to those ideas after the
armistice, as I found in Cologne and other towns, and as friends of
mine who had visited Berlin told me after peace was signed. The Germans
refused to believe in accusations of atrocity. They knew that some of
these stories had been faked by hostile propa