Many of us wonder today how much of all this love we, in the days to come, will be able to rescue from the debris.  “Has the world gone mad that it has ceased to believe in our sincerity?” This at present is the cry of many, many thousand German men and women.  Do we deserve to have our love requited with hate?  And to find in the countries which declare themselves neutral, distrust, reserve, and, in fact, doubt of our honest intentions?  Sad, dull despair has taken possession of the hearts of our best men and women.  It is not because they tremble for the fate of the loved ones who have been compelled to go to the front and not because there is any fear as to the outcome of this war.  Not one among us doubts the ultimate triumph of Germany.  We also know that we must pay a terrible toll for this victory with the blood of our sons, fathers and husbands.

Equally as much as they mourn the loss of our young manhood many of our best citizens deplore the hatred which has spread over the face of the globe, hate which has torn asunder what was believed to have been a firmly woven net of a common European culture.  That which we with ardent souls have labored to create is being devastated by ruthless force.

The following story of the non-commissioned German officer is typical or symbolical of many.  He, while the bullets of the inhabitants of Louvain fell around him, rescued the priceless old paintings from the burning Church of St. Peter, simply because he was an art-historian and knew and loved each of the masterpieces.  And well we all understand the feelings which mastered him during those moments of horror.

He would probably think and say, “I have but done my duty.”

And now we have arrived at the point which gives rise to the greatest amount of antipathy.  Our opponents declare we are endowed with great ability—­they say they must acknowledge that.  But how can a race of stiff, dry, duty-performing beings awaken love?  The German must lose all claim to individual freedom and independence of thought in consequence of the training which he receives.  When he is a child he commences it in a military subordination in the school, he continues it in the barracks, and later, when he enters a vocational life, under the stern leadership of his superiors.  He becomes, our critics continue, simply a disagreeable pedantic tool of the all-powerful “drill.”  This atmosphere of “drill,” or in other words this stern hard military spirit, envelops him, accompanies him as guardian from the cradle to the grave, and makes of him an unbearable companion for all the more refined, gentle, and amiable nations.  Yes, our opponents often declare that they are waging war not only against Germany, but against this pedantic, military, tyrannical sense of duty, which they call the “Prussian spirit.”  It shall once and for all, they assert, be eradicated from the world.

A Religious Feeling of Duty.