If heaven wills that we should issue regenerated from this terrible trial, we shall have the sacred duty of showing ourselves worthy of our regeneration.  By the complete victory of German arms the independence of Europe would be secured.  It would be necessary to make it clear to the different nations of Europe that this war must be the last between themselves.  They must see at last that their sanguinary duels only bring a shameful advantage to the one who, without taking part in them, is their originator.  Then they must devote themselves mutually to the work of civilization and peace, which will then make misunderstandings impossible.

In this direction much had already been done before the war began.  The dfferent nations had already met in peaceful emulation and were to meet again at Berlin for the Olympian games.  It is only necessary to recall the aeronautic races, the boat races, the horse races, and the beneficial international influence of the arts and sciences, and the great super-national Nobel Prizes.  The barbarian Germany has, as is well known, led the way among the other nations with her great institutions for social reform.  A victory would oblige us to go forward on this path and to make the blessings of such institutions general.  Our victory would, furthermore, secure the future existence of the Teutonic race for the welfare of the world.  During the last decade, for example, how fruitful has the Scandinavian literature been for the German, and vice versa, the German for the Scandinavian.  How many Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes have lately, without feeling conscious of a drop of foreign blood, shaken hands with German brothers in Stockholm, Christiania, Copenhagen, Munich, Vienna, and Berlin.  How much homely good-fellowship has grown up around the noble names of Ibsen, Bjoernsen, and Strindberg.

Faust and Rifles.

I hear that abroad an enormous number of lying tales are being fabricated to the detriment of our honor, our culture, and our strength.  Well, those who create these idle tales should reflect that the momentous hour is not favorable for fiction.  On three frontiers our own blood bears witness.  I myself have sent out two of my sons.  All our intrepid German soldiers know why they are going to war.  There are no analphabets to be found among them; all the more, however, of those who, besides their rifle, have their Goethe’s “Faust,” their “Zarathustra,” a work of Schopenhauer’s, the Bible, or their Homer in their knapsacks.  And even those who have no book in the knapsack know that they are fighting for a hearth at which every guest is welcome.

On the frontier stands our blood testimony; the Socialist side by side with the bourgeois, the peasant beside the man of learning, the Prince beside the workman; and they all fight for German freedom, for German domestic life, for German art, German science, German progress; they fight with the full, clear consciousness of a noble and rich national possession, for internal and external goods, all of which serve for the general progress and development of mankind.