The Hun: “Keep Neutral”
EVERY great event is an occasion for the moral education of the world. Froude, in his essay “On the Science of History,” says that the value of history is that it sounds across the centuries the eternal note of right and wrong. Along with the unbelievable calamities that have come in the train of the war that in August, 1914, was shamelessly, dishonorably and with malice aforethought precipitated by the Kaiser and his fellow highwaymen, there stands out one colossal good: it has made the world increasingly ethical. The flaunting by the German military party of all that we associate with fair play, chivalry, democracy, humanity, even Christianity itself, has aroused the Allied peoples to the fact that the foundation principles of happiness are at stake.
The brutality of the Teutons—Austrians and Germans alike—their willingness, in order to win, to throw away everything we think admirable in conduct, created a reaction in America by arousing us from our laissez-faire attitude to the conviction that there can be no neutrality between right and wrong. The opportunity should not be lost to enforce this lesson upon the young, who should be taught to hate the devilish spirit by which the Teutons are obsessed. In due time, when their defeat is accomplished, a reaction will set in among themselves. The cost is appalling, but I believe that nations, like men, can
Meantime, with what pride we realize that—as eventually even German historians will admit—our own part in the war is on a higher plane of disinterestedness than we have ever reached before, a level of altruism that has rarely, if ever, been attained by any other nation!
ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON.
February 22, 1918.