For athletics they had their turn vereins in which men went through hard, laborious exercises which made them muscle-bound.  Their favorite sports were hunting and fencing—­the desire to kill or wound.  They rowed some but they knew nothing of baseball, boxing, tennis, golf or the usual sports so popular with young men in England, France and America.  Aside from fencing, they had not a sport calculated to produce agility or nimbleness of foot and brain.

Their emotions expanded and their sentiments thrilled at the spectacle of war.  Uniforms, helmets and gold lace delighted their eyes.  The parade, the guard mount, the review were the finest things they knew.  To a people trained in such a school and purposely given great burdens that they might attain fortitude, war was second nature.  They welcomed it as a sort of pastime.

In the system on which Kultur was based, it was necessary to strike deeply the religious note; no difference if it was a false note.  The German ear was so accustomed to discord it could not recognize the true from the false.  The Kaiser was heralded to his people as a deeply religious man.  In his public utterances he never failed to call upon God to grant him aid and bless his works.

One of the old traditions of the Fatherland was that the king, being specially appointed by God, could do no wrong.  To the thinking portion of the nation this could have been nothing less than absurd fallacy, but where the majority do not think; if a thing is asserted strongly and often enough, they come to accept it.  It becomes a belief.  The people had become so impressed with the devoutness of the Kaiser and his assumption of Divine guidance, that the great majority of them believed the kaiser was always right; that he could do no wrong.  When the great blow of war finally was struck the Kaiser asked his God to look down and bless the sword that he had drawn; a prayer altogether consistent coming from his lips, for the god he worshipped loved war, was a god of famine, rapine and blood.  From the moment of that appeal, military autocracy and absolute monarchy were doomed.  It took time, it took lives, it took more treasure than a thousand men could count in a lifetime.  But the assault had been against civilization, on the very foundation of all that humanity had gained through countless centuries.  The forces of light were too strong for it; would not permit it to triumph.

The President of the United States, from the bedside of his dying wife, appealed to the nations for some means of reaching peace for Europe.  The last thoughts of his dying helpmate, were of the great responsibility resting upon her husband incident to the awful crisis in the lives of the nations of earth, that was becoming more pronounced with each second of time.

The Pope was stricken to death by the great calamity to civilization.  A few minutes before the end came he said that the Almighty in His infinite mercy was removing him from the world to spare him the anguish of the awful war.