sed
against her from one end of the earth to the other. Fear is overcome by
indignation. On every side it is asserted that the victory of German
imperialism and militarism would be the triumph of despotism, brutality,
and barbarism. These ideas are expressed to us by Americans of the North
and South, by Spaniards, Italians, Greeks, Swiss, and Rumanians. The
nation which burned the University of Louvain and the Cathedral of
Rheims has brought dishonor upon itself.

What shall we think of the prodigious contrast which manifests itself
between the high culture of Germany and the end at which she aims, the
means which she employs in the present war? Is it enough to explain this
contrast, to allege that in spite of all their science the Germans are
but slightly civilized, that in the sixteenth century they were still
boorish and uncultivated and that their science, an affair of
specialists and pundits, has never penetrated their soul or influenced
their character?

This explanation is justified. Consider the German professor in the beer
garden, in the relations of everyday life, in his amusements. With
certain notable exceptions he excels only in discovering and collecting
materials for study and in drawing from them, by mechanical operations,
solutions that rest wholly upon text and argument and make no appeal
whatever to ordinary judgment and good sense. What a disproportion often
between his science and his real education. What vulgarity of tastes and
sentiments and language. What brutality of methods on the part of this
man whose authority is indisputable in his specialty. Take this learned
man from his university chair, place him on that scene of war where
force can alone reign and where the gross appetites are unchained, it is
not surprising that his conduct approaches that of savages.

*A Culture of Violence.*

That is the current judgment and not without reason. The savant and the
man, among the Germans, are only too often strangers to each other. The
German in war is inhuman not merely because of an explosion of his true
nature, gross and violent, but by order. His brutality is calculated and
systematized. It justifies the words of La Harpe, "There is such a thing
as a scientific barbarity." In 1900 the German Emperor haranguing his
soldiers about to set sail for China, exhorted them to leave nothing
living in their path and to bear themselves like Huns.

If, then, in this war, in the manner in which they hav