“Before the war, the pastor writes, it was considered immoral to hate; now, however, Germans know that they not only may, but they must hate.  Herr Lissauer’s ‘Hymn of Hate’ against England is, he declares, a faithful expression of the feelings cherished in the depths of the German soul.

“‘All protests against this hate,’ the pastor writes, ’fall on deaf ears; we strike down all hands that would avert it.  We cannot do otherwise; we must hate the brood of liars.  Our hate was provoked, and the German can hate more thoroughly than any one else.  A feeling that this is the case is penetrating into England, but the fear of the German hate is as yet hidden.  There is a grain of truth in Lord Curzon’s statement that the phlegmatic temperament of his countrymen is incapable of hating as the Germans hate.

“’We Germans do, as a matter of fact, hate differently than the sons of Albion.  We Germans hate honorably, for our hatred is based on right and justice.  England, on the other hand, hates mendaciously, being impelled by envy, ill-will, and jealousy.  It was high time that we tore the mask from England’s face, that we finally saw England as she really is.

“’We hate with a clean conscience, although religion seems to condemn as unaesthetic everything that is included in the word hate.’  The Pastor concludes by asserting that ’we, who are fighting for truth and right with clean hands and a clean conscience, must have Him on our side Who is stronger than the strongest battalions.  Hence our courage and our confidence in a fortunate outcome of the world conflagration.  The dawn will soon appear that announces that the “Day of Harvest” for Germany has broken.’”

“The avowal that the love of good Germans for Germany is inseparable from hatred of other countries shows how deeply the aggressiveness of German policy has sunk into the nation’s mood,” says The Times.  “Only by constantly viewing their own country as in a natural state of challenge to all others can Germans have come to absorb the view that hatred is the normal manifestation of patriotism.  It is a purely militarist conception.

“Hate is at bottom a slavish passion, and remote from that heroic spirit of the warrior with which the Germans represent themselves as facing a world in arms.  The hater subjects his mind to the domination of what he hates; he loses his independence and volition and becomes the prey of the hated idea.  At last he cannot free his mind from the obsession; and the deliberate cultivation of hate in the conscientious German manner is a kind of mental suicide.”

THE GREAT HOUR.

By HERMANN SUDERMANN.

    Whether, O Father in Heaven, we still put our trust in You,
    Whether You are but a dream of a sacred past,
    See now, we swear to You, Witness of Truth,
    Not we have wanted it—­
    This murder, this world-ending