that every quotation can be paralleled by the press both secular and religious on our own side of the conflict.  In all fairness let us state that a large proportion of the sermons which have been preached in the churches of Germany, England, and America have had a recognition of the sins of their own people.  But there have been many preachers on both sides who have praised their own nation to the skies with Pharisaic self-righteousness, and have seen the enemy only with the distorted eyes of prejudice and hate.

It will not be necessary to quote here the notorious “Hymn of Hate,” by Ernst Lissauer, which was distributed by the Crown Prince of Bavaria to his army.  Rather let us quote from some of the sermons and poems of German pastors and the religious press.  In a collection of poems published by a German pastor, Konsistorialrat Dietrich Vorwerk, there occurred the following paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer:  “Though the warrior’s bread be scanty, do Thou work daily death and tenfold woe unto the enemy.  Forgive in merciful long-suffering each bullet and each blow which misses its mark!  Lead us not into the temptation of letting our wrath be too tame in carrying out Thy divine judgment!  Deliver us and our Ally from the infernal Enemy and his servants on earth.  Thine is the kingdom, the German land; may we, by aid of Thy steel-clad hand, achieve the power and the glory.”  Fortunately, this was deleted in the later editions of this book.

The published sermons of Pastor H. Francke are also typical: 

“As Jesus was treated, so also have the German people been treated.  From the East the Russian threatens us.  Injustice and bloody deeds of violence are his life-element, agreements and constitutions, solemnly sworn to, have no significance for him; he is stained with blood from top to toe.  Germany is precisely—­who would venture to deny it?—­the representative of the highest morality, of the purest humanity, of the most chastened Christianity.  They envy us our freedom, our power to do our work in peace.  To heal the world by the German nature is to become a blessing to the people of the earth.  Wherever the German spirit obtains supremacy, there freedom prevails.  Here we come upon the old intimate kinship between the essence of Christianity and of Germanism.  Because of their close spiritual relationship, therefore, Christianity must find its fairest flower in the German mind.  Therefore we have a right to say:  ‘Our German Christianity—­the most perfect, the most pure.’  Thus the Germans are the very nearest to the Lord.  Is He the God of those others?  No, they serve at best Satan, the father of lies.”

The Rev. J. Rump writes in the same strain: