fearful war, in which our nation is compelled to fight not only for its power, but for its very existence and its entire civilization, the work of destruction should be greater than in former wars, and if many a precious achievement of culture falls to ruin, the responsibility for all this entirely rests with those who were not content with letting loose this ruthless war, nay, who did not even shrink from pressing murderous weapons upon a peaceful population for them to fall surreptitiously upon our troops who trusted in the observance of the military usages of all civilized peoples.  They alone are the guilty authors of everything which happens here.  Upon their heads the verdict of history will fall for the lasting injury which culture suffers.

September, 1914.

UNIVERSITIES.

Tuebingen, Berlin, Bonn, Breslau, Erlangen, Frankfurt, Freiburg,
Giessen, Goettingen, Greifswald, Halle, Heidelberg, Jena, Kiel,
Koenigsberg, Leipzig, Marburg, Muenchen, Muenster, Rostock, Strassburg,
Wuerzburg.

Reply to the German Professors

By British Scholars.

We see with regret the names of many German professors and men of science, whom we regard with respect and, in some cases, with personal friendship, appended to a denunciation of Great Britain so utterly baseless that we can hardly believe that it expresses their spontaneous or considered opinion.  We do not question for a moment their personal sincerity when they express their horror of war and their zeal for “the achievements of culture.”  Yet we are bound to point out that a very different view of war, and of national aggrandizement based on the threat of war, has been advocated by such influential writers as Nietzsche, von Treitschke, von Buelow, and von Bernhardi, and has received widespread support from the press and from public opinion in Germany.  This has not occurred, and in our judgment would scarcely be possible, in any other civilized country.  We must also remark that it is German armies alone which have, at the present time, deliberately destroyed or bombarded such monuments of human culture as the Library at Louvain and the Cathedrals at Rheims and Malines.

The Diplomatic Papers.

No doubt it is hard for human beings to weigh justly their country’s quarrels; perhaps particularly hard for Germans, who have been reared in an atmosphere of devotion to their Kaiser and his army; who are feeling acutely at the present hour, and who live under a Government which, we believe, does not allow them to know the truth.  Yet it is the duty of learned men to make sure of their facts.  The German “White Book” contains only some scanty and carefully explained selections from the diplomatic correspondence which preceded this war.  And we venture to hope that our German colleagues will sooner or later do their best to get access to the full correspondence, and will form therefrom an independent judgment.