This is the moment, therefore, for us to frame our inexorable resolution.  After the final victory, when the enemy is crushed—­as crushed as he will be—­efforts will be made to enlist our sympathy.  We shall be told that the unfortunate German people are merely the victims of their monarch and their feudal caste; that no blame attaches to the Germany we know that is so sympathetic and cordial—­the Germany of quaint old houses and open-hearted greetings; the Germany that sits under its lime trees beneath the clear light of the moon—­but only to Prussia, hateful, arrogant Prussia; that homely, peace-loving Bavaria, the genial, hospitable dwellers on the banks of the Rhine, the Silesian and Saxon—­I know not who besides—­have merely obeyed and been compelled to obey orders they detested, but were unable to resist.

We are in the face of reality now.  Let us look at it well and pronounce our sentence, for this is the moment when we hold the proofs in our hands; when the elements of the crime are hot before us and should out—­the truth that will soon fade from our memory.  Let us tell ourselves now therefore that all we shall be told hereafter will be false.  Let us unflinchingly adhere to what we decide at this moment when the glare of the horror is on us.

No Degrees of Guilt.

It is not true that in this gigantic crime there are innocent and guilty or degrees of guilt.  They stand on one level, all who have taken part.  The German from the north has no more especial craving for blood than the German from the south has especial tenderness and pity.  It is very simple.  It is the German from one end of the country to the other who stands revealed as a beast of prey that the firm will of our planet finally repudiates.  We have here no wretched slaves dragged along by a tyrant King who alone is responsible.  Nations have the Government they deserve, or rather the Government they have is truly no more than a magnified public projection of the private morality and mentality of the nation.

If eighty million innocent people merely expose the inherent falseness and superficiality of their innocence—­and it is a monster they maintain at their head who stands for all that is true in their nature, because it is he who represents the eternal aspirations of their race, which lie far deeper than their apparent transient virtues—­let there be no suggestion of error, of intelligent people having been tricked and misled.  No nation can be deceived that does not wish to be deceived.  It is not intelligence that Germany lacks.  In the sphere of intellect such things are not possible, nor in the region of the enlightened, reflecting will.  No nation permits herself to be coerced into the one crime man cannot pardon.  It is of her own accord she hastens toward it.  Her chief has no need to persuade.  It is she who urges him on.