common men in our ranks there has developed
almost plant like a certain realization of a common duty of
these two nations, a feeling of certain virtues which they,
complementing one another, can preserve only by co-operation.
But for the cultured ones among us, the idea of a hereditary
feud has given way to a clear consciousness that there is a
middle European Continental culture, supported by German,
Austrian, and French genius in common, and that the
preservation, development, and continuation thereof as against
a hasty and superficial Anglization must be the task of the
future. All, all now learn through experience that this matter
with France is a woe of civilization (kulturjammer), and that
now at last it is going to change, that it could change, if--

In the same newspaper the Berlin National Economist, Prof. Werner
Sombart, writes:

Against France we probably experience the least aversion or
hatred. At bottom we have really nothing "against the
Frenchmen," but they have a great deal against us. But we find
them, in spite of their fanatical hatred of the Germans (which
we honor and respect) chivalrous antagonists, who in their
wrath of battle are certainly quite our peers; and in them, we
find, there is far more force and will for victory than we
were in the beginning wont to believe. They die for their
fatherland, and their final reason for fighting is after all
an ideal one, the faith in the glory and greatness of a
super-individual, the self-sacrifice to a whole that is higher
than the personal. Thus, at least, does that France stand
opposed to us, that is fighting for its existence in the
trenches along the Aisne.

With the rabble that shouts "a bas la guerre" in Paris, we
need reckon just as little as with the rather doubtful
citizens that constitute the immediate Government of France
and whose heroism seems to show great rents these days. Yes,
for the heroic race of Frenchmen we feel almost a sort of
pity, as with a noble wild game of the forest, wounded unto
death. And this pity finds expression in wistful sympathy when
we think of the quixotic strain in this wrestling with an
overwhelming foe, when we see the childlike faith with which
the people have grasped at every unplausible hope of rescue
from its anguish of deat