“What is the spirit of our German mysticism, the spirit of Eckhart and Tauler, except:  Drunkenness of the soul in a waking condition?  The accepted law on which all great German deeds rest, is:  to dovetail enthusiasm with discipline and order.  From our Gothic, through German barock to Frederick the Great and Kant, on to the classical period—­what does all that mean if it is not the architecture of one huge feeling?  The soul runs riot in its imaginings and therewith the intellect builds.  The ravings of the soul provide the materials with which the mind builds.

“What is German music from Bach to Beethoven and from Beethoven to Wagner—­yes, even to Richard Strauss—­but enthusiasm with discipline?  German music has been our mobilization; it has gone on just as in a partitur by Richard Wagner—­absolute rapture with perfect precision!

“Hence when we saw the miracle of this mobilization—­all Germany’s military manhood packed in railway trains, rolling through the land, day by day and night after night, never a minute late and never a question for which the right answer was not ready and waiting—­when we saw all this, we were not astonished, because it was no miracle; it was nothing other than a natural result of a thousand years of work and preparation; it was the net profit of the whole of German history.

“At the German mobilization not only our brave soldiers, reserves and militia (Landwehrmaenner und Landstuermler) entered the field, but the whole of Germany’s historic past marched with them.  It was this which inspired the unshakable confidence which has endured from the first day of war.  In truth, the dear Fatherland has every reason to be calm.

“In the meantime something more has happened:  all in a moment we became Germans!  We held our breaths when the Kaiser uttered these words.  This too arose out of the deepest depths of Germany’s yearnings; it sounded like an eagle-cry of our most ancient longings.  Germany’s soul has long pined to tear itself from its narrow confines (verwerden, as Eckhart, or sich entselbsten, as Goethe put it), to lay aside self-will and sacrifice itself, to be absorbed in the whole, and yet still to serve (Wagner).  And this eternal German yearning had never reached fulfilment, but self-interest and egoism have always been stronger; every German has been at war with all the others.  ‘For every man to go his own way,’ said Goethe, ’is the peculiar characteristic of the German race.  I have never seen them united except in their hate for Napoleon.  I am curious to see what they will do when he is banished to the other side of the Rhine.’  And Goethe was right:  no sooner was the land freed from the oppressor, than each began again to think and act only for himself.  Hence, when we first learned of the Kaiser’s words we felt almost a joyous fear.  If it were only true that now there were only Germans!  But on the very next day our eyes saw and our ears heard that at last there were only Germans, and with that, all pain and fear was forgotten.  If war is awful, even a just war, a holy war—­even for the victor too, we will endure all that, for it is as nothing; no sacrifice is too great for this prize—­that we are all only Germans.