the divine
peace. Since Germany represents peace, whoever opposes Germany intends
war. Now it is legitimate that Germany should arm to the teeth because
she is the incarnation of peace, but the adversaries of Germany, who, in
opposing Germany oppose peace, cannot have the same right. It is the
duty of Germany to carry her armaments to the maximum; other peoples
have the right to arm only as Germany may permit.

Germany does not seek war. On the contrary, she tries by inspiring
terror to render it impossible. But if some nation should profit or be
capable of profiting by her love of peace to pretend to rights which
offend her she will consent to punish that nation. She will be pained by
the violence she has to do to that nation and the severity which she has
to use toward the guilty. But soldier of God as she is, she cannot fail
to her mission. Any nation which refuses to do the will of Germany
proves by that very fact its cultural inferiority and becomes guilty. It
must be chastised.

The method according to which Germany will make war is determined by
these premises. War is a return to the state of nature. Germany yields
to this temporary retrogression because she has to do with people of an
inferior culture who must be taught a lesson, and must be spoken to in a
language which they understand. Now a characteristic of a state of
nature is that force reigns undisputed. In this very trait resides the
sublime beauty of that state, its grandeur and its fecundity. Don't talk
of that romantic chivalry which pretends in time of war to temper the
violence of savage instincts by the intervention of feminine
sensibility. War is war. _Krieg ist Krieg_. It isn't child's play, it
isn't sport where it is necessary to blend barbarity and humanity so as
to conciliate and humanize them. It is barbarity itself let loose as
widely and fully as possible. This is not perversity. Man as man suffers
in becoming barbarous, but the man who replaces God suppresses the
feebleness of the creature. He submits himself to the mysterious and
sublime law in virtue of which evil is by so much more beneficent as it
is achieved with resolution and completeness. _Pecca fortiter._

*The Nature of War.*

The first article of the code of war is then the suppression of all
sensibility, pity, humanity. The nature of war is to kill and destroy.
The more it destroys and kills the sooner it comes to its ideal form.
Moreover, it is at bottom more humane the