* * * * *

“One of the political phenomena of America has always been the indifference of the German to active participation in politics.  Efforts to persuade him to organize with any political party have never succeeded except in isolated cases.  The German-American has been regarded as an independent politically.  Until Europe’s conflict raised concealed characteristics to the surface the German-American’s indifference to politics had not been looked upon as a serious matter.”—­From article by Alt.  John Herbert in the London “Daily News,” December, 1914.

* * * * *

GERMANY’S PURPOSE.

According to Herr Maximilien Harden’s article in “Die Zukunft,” as reproduced in the “New York Times,” December, 1914.

“Not as weak-willed blunderers have we under-taken the fearful risk of this war.  We wanted it.  Because we had to wish it and could wish it.  May the Teuton devil throttle those whiners whose pleas for excuses make us ludicrous in these hours of lofty experience.  We do not stand, and shall not place ourselves, before the Court of Europe.  Our power shall create new law in Europe.  Germany strikes.  If it conquers new realms for its genius, the priesthood of all the gods will sing songs of praise to the good war.

“We are at the beginning of a war the development and duration of which are incalculable, and in which up to date no foe has been brought to his knees.  We wage the war in order to free enslaved peoples, and thereafter to comfort ourselves with the unselfish and useless consciousness of our own righteousness.  We wage it from the lofty point of view and with the conviction that Germany, as a result of her achievements and in proportion to them, is justified in asking, and must obtain, wider room on earth for development and for working out the possibilities that are in her.”

* * * * *

ENGLAND’S PERFIDY.

From the Manifesto of Professors Haeckel and Eucken, September, 1914.

“What is happening to-day surpasses every instance from the past; this last example will be permanently characterized in the annals of the world as the indelible shame of England.  Great Britain is fighting for a Slavic, semi-Asiatic Power against Teutonism; she is fighting, not only in the ranks of barbarism but also on the side of wrong and injustice, for let it not be forgotten that Russia began the war, because she refused to permit adequate expiation for a miserable assassination; but the blame for extending the limits of the present conflict to the proportions of a world-war, through which the sum of human culture is threatened, rests upon England.