, England,
and America have had a recognition of the sins of their own people. But
there have been many preachers on both sides who have praised their own
nation to the skies with Pharisaic self-righteousness, and have seen the
enemy only with the distorted eyes of prejudice and hate.

It will not be necessary to quote here the notorious "Hymn of Hate," by
Ernst Lissauer, which was distributed by the Crown Prince of Bavaria to
his army. Rather let us quote from some of the sermons and poems of
German pastors and the religious press. In a collection of poems
published by a German pastor, Konsistorialrat Dietrich Vorwerk, there
occurred the following paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer: "Though the
warrior's bread be scanty, do Thou work daily death and tenfold woe unto
the enemy. Forgive in merciful long-suffering each bullet and each blow
which misses its mark! Lead us not into the temptation of letting our
wrath be too tame in carrying out Thy divine judgment! Deliver us and
our Ally from the infernal Enemy and his servants on earth. Thine is the
kingdom, the German land; may we, by aid of Thy steel-clad hand, achieve
the power and the glory." Fortunately, this was deleted in the later
editions of this book.

The published sermons of Pastor H. Francke are also typical:

"As Jesus was treated, so also have the German people been treated. From
the East the Russian threatens us. Injustice and bloody deeds of
violence are his life-element, agreements and constitutions, solemnly
sworn to, have no significance for him; he is stained with blood from top
to toe. Germany is precisely--who would venture to deny it?--the
representative of the highest morality, of the purest humanity, of the
most chastened Christianity. They envy us our freedom, our power to do
our work in peace. To heal the world by the German nature is to become a
blessing to the people of the earth. Wherever the German spirit obtains
supremacy, there freedom prevails. Here we come upon the old intimate
kinship between the essence of Christianity and of Germanism. Because of
their close spiritual relationship, therefore, Christianity must find its
fairest flower in the German mind. Therefore we have a right to say:
'Our German Christianity--the most perfect, the most pure.' Thus the
Germans are the very nearest to the Lord. Is He the God of those others?
No, they serve at best Satan, the father of lies."

The Rev. J. Rump writes in the same