The organ tone of such words as these at last rolls forth once more in their native land.

Therefore cease the pitiful attempts to excuse Germany’s action.  No longer wail to strangers, who do not care to hear you, telling them how dear to us were the smiles of peace we had smeared like rouge upon our lips, and how deeply we regret in our hearts that the treachery of conspirators dragged us, unwilling, into a forced war.  Cease, you publicists, your wordy war against hostile brothers in the profession, whose superiority you cannot scold away, and who merely smile while they pick up, out of your laboriously stirred porridge slowly warmed over a flame of borrowed alcohol, the crumbs on which their “selfishness” is to choke!  That national selfishness does not seem a duty to you, but a sin, is something you must conceal from foreign eyes.

Cease, also, you popular writers, the degraded scolding of enemies that does not emanate from passion but out of greedy hankering for the applause of the masses, and which continually nauseates us amid the piety of this hour!  Because our statemen failed to discover and foil shrewd plans of deception is no reason why we may hoist the flag of most pious morality.  Not as weak-willed blunderers have we undertaken the fearful risk of this war.  We wanted it.  Because we had to wish it and could wish it.  May the Teuton devil throttle those whiners whose pleas for excuses make us ludicrous in these hours of lofty experience.  We do not stand, and shall not place ourselves, before the court of Europe.  Our power shall create new law in Europe.  Germany strikes.  If it conquers new realms for its genius, the priesthood of all the gods will sing songs of praise to the good war.

Only he who is specially trained for a race of troops may go along into the field.  Only the man versed in statecraft should be allowed to participate in the talk about the results of war.  Not he who has out yonder proved an unworthy diplomat, nor the dilettante loafer sprayed with the perfume of volatile emotions.  Manhood liability to military service requires manhood suffrage?  That question may rest for the time being; likewise the desire for equality of that right shall not be argued today.  But common sense should warn against the assumption of an office without the slightest special preliminary training.  Politics is an art that can be mastered not in the leisure hours of the brain, but only by the passionate, self-sacrificing devotion of a whole lifetime.  Now seek around you.

We are at the beginning of a war the development and duration of which are incalculable, and in which up to date no foe has been brought to his knees.  To guide the sword to its goal, Tom, Dick, and Harry, Poet Arrogance and Professor Crumb advertise their prowess in the newspaper Advice and Assistance.  Brave folk, whose knowledge concerning this new realm of their endeavor emanates solely from that same newspaper!