They are pandering to the lowest instincts of the
people, and enervating their manhood by every artifice in their
power. Thus they have successfully achieved the introduction into
Germany of that most degraded form of self-worship--Chauvinism. They
poison her morality by wisely organizing that every conscience,
every conviction, should have its price. They debase her ideals by
decreeing that henceforth the officer is to be the national patron
saint to whom the people are to offer up their devotion and worship.
The press, literature, art, lecturing-room--all preach the same
gospel, that the highest product of humanity is the officer, and
that "soldierly discipline and smartness"--in other words, slavish
submission, self-conceit, arrogance, and the upholding of mere brute
force--are the noblest qualities of a man and a patriot. The army is
taught to forget that it is the armed population of the country, and
is trained to be a band of body servants. And even when the soldiers
return to private life, the idea of servitude is carefully kept up,
and he finds again in the military 'Verein' the beloved barrack
life, with all its servile submissiveness and abnegation of free
will. Whichever way I look, I am filled with horror.
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