The same note runs through the Jewish Scriptures.  At the beginning (Genesis, chap.  IV), in the old story of Cain’s murder of Abel, when Cain inquired of the Lord “Am I my brother’s keeper?” the inference to be drawn most decidedly is that the Lord thought he was, and not the State, or the tribal government of that day, in his stead.  Both the Christian and Jewish religions are essentially individualistic in appeal and social in responsibility, and so also is Democracy.

May not the extreme brutality of the German soldier of to-day be the result not only of the ruthless command from the official higher up but also of the de-souling, materialistic influence of Socialism on the common people of Germany during the past twenty-five years?  Is not the viciousness of Prussian militarism plus the demoralizing influence of Socialism a sufficient explanation?

According to Mr. J. Dover Wilson, “the German nation, in fact, is suffering from some form of arrested development, and arrested development, as the criminologists tell us, is almost invariably accompanied by morbid psychology.  That Germany at the present moment, and for some time past, has been the victim of a morbid state of mind, few impartial observers will deny.  It has, however, not been so generally recognized that this disease—­for it is nothing less—­is due not to any national depravity but to constitutional and structural defects."[8]

Many Socialists point to the housing, sanitary, insurance and other State activities of Germany as showing the care of the Government for the laboring man.  My dogs are well fed, are kept clean, dry, healthy and amused, and are carefully looked after in every way.  But they are still dogs.  They have no soul or any right or power of self-determination.  So recent events show beyond cavil that the German workingman, from the standpoint of the State and Government, was in reality a political dog.  He existed only for the good of the divinely constituted State and its God-given princely proprietors, and as such was used and sacrificed for the imperial and national glory.  The German laboring man was the most exploited, the most servile, the most unfairly treated worker on earth.  He was given enough material comforts or even amusements (religious, theatrical, musical or otherwise) to keep him seemingly content, but politically he was not permitted to think—­or economically either, when taken in the broad sense of the term.  Therefore those who expect from the revolution or uprising against the Kaiser and his military henchmen the immediate establishment of a well-ordered and democratic republic, are reckoning without their host.  People must be experienced in self-government before they can make a success of democracy as that term is understood in America, and experienced the German people are not.