New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 1, No. 1
TextAppeal of the German Universities
The campaign of systematic lies and slander which has been carried on against the German people and empire for years has since the outbreak of the war surpassed everything with which one might have credited even the most unscrupulous press. To repudiate any charges raised against our Kaiser and his Government rests with the authorities in question. They have done so, and their defense is substantiated by striking proofs. He who wants to know the truth can learn it, and we trust that truth will prevail. But if we are to look on, when our enemies, guided by envy and malice, are shameless enough to charge our army and with it our whole nation with barbarous atrocities and senseless vandalism, and when their statements appear to be believed, to a certain extent, among neutrals and in places which, at other times, were well disposed toward us; if we are quietly to look on when all this happens, we, the appointed trustees of culture and education in our Fatherland, feel in duty bound to break the reserve which our calling and position impose on us with a strong expression of protest. Hence we now appeal to the learned bodies with whom we hitherto worked in common in the interests of the highest ideals of the human race and with whom, even at this time, when hatred and passion rule the world and confuse the minds of men, we hope to remain of the same mind, in the same service of truth. We appeal to them in the confident belief that our voice will find hearing, and that the expression of our honest indignation will meet with credence. Moreover, we appeal to the love of truth and to the sense of justice of the many thousands all over the world who, being welcome guests in our educational institutions, have taken part in the inheritance of German culture, and who thus have had an opportunity of watching and appreciating the German people in peaceful labor, their industry and uprightness, their sense of order and discipline, their reverence for intellectual work of every kind, and their profound love for sciences and arts. All of you who know that our army is no mercenary host but embraces the entire nation from first to last, that it is led by the country's best sons, and that, at this very hour, thousands from our midst, teachers as well as students, are shedding their life's blood as officers and soldiers on the battlefields of Russia and France; you who have seen and heard for yourselves in what spirit and with what success our youths are treated and taught, and that nothing is stamped upon their minds more deeply than reverence and admiration for artistic, scientific and technical creations of the human mind, no matter what country and nation brought them forth; we call upon you who know all this as witnesses, whether it can be true what our enemies report that the German Army is a horde of barbarians and a band of incendiaries who take pleasure in leveling defenseless cities to the ground and in destroying venerable monuments of history and art. If you wish to pay honor to the cause of truth you will be as firmly convinced as we are that German troops, wherever they had to do destructive work, could only have done so in the bitterness of defensive warfare. But we appeal to all those whom the slanderous reports of our enemies reach and who are not yet altogether blinded by passion, in the name of truth and justice, to shut their ears to such insults to the German people, and not allow themselves to be prejudiced by those who prove ever anew that they hope to be victorious by the instrumentality of lies. Now, if in this fearful war, in which our nation is compelled to fight not only for its power, but for its very existence and its entire civilization, the work of destruction should be greater than in former wars, and if many a precious achievement of culture falls to ruin, the responsibility for all this entirely rests with those who were not content with letting loose this ruthless war, nay, who did not even shrink from pressing murderous weapons upon a peaceful population for them to fall surreptitiously upon our troops who trusted in the observance of the military usages of all civilized peoples. They alone are the guilty authors of everything which happens here. Upon their heads the verdict of history will fall for the lasting injury which culture suffers.
September, 1914.
UNIVERSITIES.
Tuebingen, Berlin, Bonn, Breslau, Erlangen, Frankfurt, Freiburg, Giessen, Goettingen, Greifswald, Halle, Heidelberg, Jena, Kiel, Königsberg, Leipzig, Marburg, Muenchen, Münster, Rostock, Strassburg, Wuerzburg.
Reply to the German Professors
By British Scholars
We see with regret the names of many German professors and men of science, whom we regard with respect and, in some cases, with personal friendship, appended to a denunciation of Great Britain so utterly baseless that we can hardly believe that it expresses their spontaneous or considered opinion. We do not question for a moment their personal sincerity when they express their horror of war and their zeal for "the achievements of culture." Yet we are bound to point out that a very different view of war, and of national aggrandizement based on the threat of war, has been advocated by such influential writers as Nietzsche, von Treitschke, von Bülow, and von Bernhardi, and has received widespread support from the press and from public opinion in Germany. This has not occurred, and in our judgment would scarcely be possible, in any other civilized country. We must also remark that it is German armies alone which have, at the present time, deliberately destroyed or bombarded such monuments of human culture as the Library at Louvain and the Cathedrals at Rheims and Malines.
The Diplomatic Papers.
No doubt it is hard for human beings to weigh justly their country's quarrels; perhaps particularly hard for Germans, who have been reared in an atmosphere of devotion to their Kaiser and his army; who are feeling acutely at the present hour, and who live under a Government which, we believe, does not allow them to know the truth. Yet it is the duty of learned men to make sure of their facts. The German "White Book" contains only some scanty and carefully explained selections from the diplomatic correspondence which preceded this war. And we venture to hope that our German colleagues will sooner or later do their best to get access to the full correspondence, and will form therefrom an independent judgment.
They will then see that, from the issue of the Austrian note to Servia onward, Great Britain, whom they accuse of causing this war, strove incessantly for peace, Her successive proposals were supported by France, Russia, and Italy, but, unfortunately, not by the one power which could by a single word at Vienna have made peace certain. Germany, in her own official defense—incomplete as that document is—does not pretend that she strove for peace; she only strove for "the localization of the conflict." She claimed that Austria should be left free to "chastise" Servia in whatever way she chose. At most she proposed that Austria should not annex a portion of Servian territory—a futile provision, since the execution of Austria's demand would have made the whole of Servia subject to her will.
Great Britain, like the rest of Europe, recognized that, whatever just grounds of complaint Austria may have had, the unprecedented terms of her note to Servia constituted a challenge to Russia and a provocation to war. The Austrian Emperor in his proclamation admitted that war was likely to ensue. The German "White Book" states in so many words: "We were perfectly aware that a possible warlike attitude of Austria-Hungary against Servia might bring Russia upon the field and therefore involve us in war. * * * We could not, however, * * * advise our ally to take a yielding attitude not compatible with his dignity." The German Government admits having known the tenor of the Austrian note beforehand, when it was concealed from all the other powers; admits backing it up after it was issued; admits that it knew the note was likely to precipitate war; and admits that, whatever professions it made to the other powers, in private it did not advise Austria to abate one jot of her demands. This, to our minds, is tantamount to admitting that Germany has, together with her unfortunate ally, deliberately provoked the present war.
One point we freely admit. Germany would very likely have preferred not to fight Great Britain at this moment. She would have preferred to weaken and humiliate Russia; to make Servia a dependent of Austria; to render France innocuous and Belgium subservient; and then, having established an overwhelming advantage, to settle accounts with Great Britain. Her grievance against us is that we did not allow her to do this.
Britain's Love of Peace.
So deeply rooted is Great Britain's love of peace, so influential among us are those who have labored through many difficult years to promote good feeling between this country and Germany, that, in spite of our ties of friendship with France, in spite of the manifest danger threatening ourselves, there was still, up to the last moment, a strong desire to preserve British neutrality, if it could be preserved without dishonor. But Germany herself made this impossible.
Great Britain, together with France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, had solemnly guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium. In the preservation of this neutrality our deepest sentiments and our most vital interests are alike involved. Its violation would not only shatter the independence of Belgium itself: it would undermine the whole basis which renders possible the neutrality of any State and the very existence of such States as are much weaker than their neighbors. We acted in 1914 just as we acted in 1870. We sought from both France and Germany assurances that they would respect Belgian neutrality. In 1870 both powers assured us of their good intentions, and both kept their promises. In 1914 France gave immediately, on July 31, the required assurance; Germany refused to answer. When, after this sinister silence, Germany proceeded to break under our eyes the treaty which we and she had both signed, evidently expecting Great Britain to be her timid accomplice, then even to the most peace-loving Englishman hesitation became impossible. Belgium had appealed to Great Britain to keep her word, and she kept it.
The German professors appear to think that Germany has in this matter some considerable body of sympathizers in the universities of Great Britain. They are gravely mistaken. Never within our lifetime has this country been so united on any great political issue. We ourselves have a real and deep admiration for German scholarship and science. We have many ties with Germany, ties of comradeship, of respect, and of affection. We grieve profoundly that, under the baleful influence of a military system and its lawless dreams of conquest, she whom we once honored now stands revealed as the common enemy of Europe and of all peoples which respect the law of nations. We must carry on the war on which we have entered. For us, as for Belgium, it is a war of defense, waged for liberty and peace.
Sir CLIFFORD ALLBUTT, Regius Professor of Physics, Cambridge.
T.W. ALLEN, Reader in Greek, Oxford.
E. ARMSTRONG, Pro-Provost of Queen's College, Oxford.
E.V. ARNOLD, Professor of Latin, University College of North Wales.
Sir C.B. BALL, Regius Professor of Surgery, Dublin.
Sir THOMAS BARLOW, President of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
BERNARD BOSANQUET, formerly Professor of Moral Philosophy, St. Andrews.
A.C. BRADLEY, formerly Professor of Poetry, Oxford.
W.H. BRAGG, Cavendish Professor of Physics, Leeds.
Sir THOMAS BROCK, Membre d'honneur de la Société des Artistes Francais.
A.J. BROWN, Professor of Biology and Chemistry of Fermentation, University of Birmingham.
JOHN BURNET, Professor of Greek, St. Andrews.
J.B. BURY, Regius Professor of Modern History, Cambridge.
Sir W.W. CHEYNE, Professor of Clinical Surgery, King's College, London, President of the Royal College of Surgeons.
J. NORMAN COLLIE, Professor of Organic Chemistry and Director of the Chemical Laboratories, University College, London.
F.C. CONYBEARE, Honorary Fellow of University College, Oxford.
Sir HENRY CRAIK, M.P. for Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities.
Sir JAMES CRICHTON-BROWNE, Vice President and Treasurer, Royal Institution.
Sir WILLIAM CROOKES, President of the Royal Society.
Sir FOSTER CUNLIFFE, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
Sir FRANCIS DARWIN, late Reader in Botany, Cambridge.
A.V. DICEY, Fellow of All Souls College and formerly Vinerian Professor of English Law, Oxford.
Sir S. DILL, Hon. Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
Sir JAMES DONALDSON, Vice Chancellor and Principal of the University of St. Andrews.
F.W. DYSON, Astronomer Royal.
Sir EDWARD ELGAR.
Sir ARTHUR EVANS, Extraordinary Professor of Prehistoric Archæology, Oxford.
L.R. FARNELL, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford.
C.H. FIRTH, Regius Professor of Modern History, Oxford.
H.A.L. FISHER, Vice Chancellor of Sheffield University.
J.A. FLEMING, Professor of Electrical Engineering in the University of London.
H.S. FOXWELL, Professor of Political Economy in the University of London.
Sir EDWARD FRY, Ambassador Extraordinary and First British Plenipotentiary to The Hague Peace Conference in 1907.
Sir ARCHIBALD GEIKIE, Past President of the Royal Society.
W.M. GELDART, Fellow of All Souls and Vinerian Professor of English Law, Oxford.
Sir RICKMAN GODLEE, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Surgery, University College, London.
B.P. GRENFELL, late Professor of Papyrology, Oxford.
E.H. GRIFFITHS, Principal of the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire.
W.H. HADOW, Principal of Armstrong College, Newcastle.
J.S. HALDANE, late Reader in Physiology, Oxford.
MARCUS HARTOG, Professor of Zoology in University College, Cork.
F.J. HAVERFIELD, Camden Professor of Ancient History, Oxford.
W.A. HERDMAN, Professor of Zoology at Liverpool, General Secretary of the British Association.
Sir W.P. HERRINGHAM, Vice Chancellor of the University of London.
E.W. HOBSON, Sadleirian Professor of Pure Mathematics, Cambridge.
D.G. HOGARTH, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Sir ALFRED HOPKINSON, late Vice Chancellor of Manchester University.
A.S. HUNT, Professor of Papyrology, Oxford.
HENRY JACKSON, Regius Professor of Greek, Cambridge.
Sir THOMAS G. JACKSON, R.A.
F.B. JEVONS, Professor of Philosophy, Durham.
H.H. JOACHIM, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.
J. JOLLY, Professor of Geology and Mineralogy, University of Dublin.
COURTNEY KENNY, Downing Professor of the Laws of England, Cambridge.
Sir F.G. KENYON, Director and Principal Librarian, British Museum.
HORACE LAMB, Professor of Mathematics, Manchester University.
J.N. LANGLEY, Professor of Physiology, Cambridge.
WALTER LEAF, Fellow of London University, President of the Hellenic Society.
Sir SIDNEY LEE, Editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, Professor of the English Language and Literature in the University of London.
Sir OLIVER LODGE, Principal of Birmingham University.
Sir DONALD MACALISTER, Principal and Vice Chancellor, Glasgow.
R.W. MACAN, Master of University College, Oxford.
Sir WILLIAM MACEWEN, Professor of Surgery, Glasgow.
J.W. MACKAIL, formerly Professor of Poetry, Oxford.
Sir PATRICK MANSON.
R.R. MARETT, Reader in Social Anthropology, Oxford.
D.S. MARGOLIOUTH, Laudian Professor of Arabic, Oxford.
Sir H.A. MIERS, Principal of the University of London.
FREDERICK W. MOTT, Fullerian Professor of Physiology, Royal Institution.
LORD MOULTON OF BANK, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary.
J.E.H. MURPHY, Professor of Irish, Dublin.
GILBERT MURRAY, Regius Professor of Greek, Oxford.
J.L. MYRES, Wykeham Professor of Ancient History, Oxford.
G.H.F. NUTTALL, Quick Professor of Biology, Cambridge.
Sir W. OSLER, Regius Professor of Medicine, Oxford.
Sir ISAMBARD OWEN, Vice Chancellor of the University of Bristol.
Sir WALTER PARRATT, Professor of Music, Oxford.
Sir HUBERT PARRY, Director of Royal College of Music.
W.H. PERKIN, Waynflete Professor of Chemistry, Oxford.
W.M. FLINDERS PETRIE EDWARDS, Professor of Egyptology, University College, London.
A.F. POLLARD, Professor of English History, London.
Sir F. POLLOCK, formerly Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence, Oxford.
EDWARD B. POULTON, Hope Professor of Zoology, Oxford.
Sir E.J. POYNTER, President of the Royal Academy of Arts.
Sir A. QUILLER-COUCH, King Edward VII. Professor of English Literature, Cambridge.
Sir WALTER RALEIGH, Professor of English Literature, Oxford.
Sir W. RAMSAY, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, London.
Lord RAYLEIGH, Past President Royal Society, Nobel Laureate, Chancellor of Cambridge University.
Lord REAY, First President British Academy.
JAMES REID, Professor of Ancient History, Cambridge.
WILLIAM RIDGEWAY, Disney Professor of Archaeology, Cambridge.
T.F. ROBERTS, Principal of the University College of Wales, Aberystwith.
J. HOLLAND ROSE, Reader in Modern History, Cambridge.
Sir RONALD ROSS, formerly Professor of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, Nobel Laureate.
M.E. SADLER, Vice Chancellor of Leeds.
W. SANDAY, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Oxford.
Sir J.E. SANDYS, Public Orator, Cambridge.
Sir ERNEST SATOW, Second British Delegate to The Hague Peace Conference in 1907.
A.H. SAYCE, Professor of Assyriology, Oxford.
ARTHUR SCHUSTER, late Professor of Physics, Manchester.
D.H. SCOTT, Foreign Secretary, Royal Society.
C.S. SHERRINGTON, Waynflete Professor of Physiology, Oxford.
GEORGE ADAM SMITH, Principal and Vice Chancellor, Aberdeen.
G.C. MOORE SMITH, Professor of English Language and Literature, Sheffield.
E.A. SONNENSCHEIN, Professor of Latin and Greek, Birmingham.
W.R. SORLEY, Professor of Moral Philosophy, Cambridge.
Sir C.V. STANFORD, Profesor of Music, Cambridge.
V.H. STANTON, Ely Professor of Divinity, Cambridge.
J. ARTHUR THOMSON, Regius Professor of Natural History, Aberdeen.
Sir J.J. THOMSON, Professor of Experimental Physics, Cambridge.
T.F. TOUT, Professor of Mediæval and Modern History, Manchester.
Sir W. TURNER, Principal and Vice Chancellor, Edinburgh.
Sir C. WALDSTEIN, late Reader in Classical Archæology and Slade Professor of Fine Art, Cambridge.
Sir J. WOLFE-BARRY.
Sir ALMROTH WRIGHT, formerly Professor of Pathology, Netley.
C.T. HAGBERG WRIGHT, Librarian, London Library.
JOSEPH WRIGHT, Professor of Comparative Philology, Oxford.
Concerning the German Professors
By Frederic Harrison
To the Editor of the London Morning Post:
Sir: I was not invited to join the reply of our distinguished scholars and professors, perhaps because it is so many years since I was the colleague of James Bryce as Professor of Jurisprudence to the Inns of Court. And, indeed, I do not care to bandy recriminations with these German defenders of the attack on civilization by the whole imperial, military, and bureaucratic order. It seems to me waste of time and loss of self-respect to notice these pedants.
The whole German press and the entire academic class seem to be banded together as an official bureau in order to spread mendacious insults and spiteful slanders. Not a word comes from them to excuse or deny the defiance of public law and the mockery of public faith by the German Emperor, his Ministers, and his armies. These professors seem to exult in serving the new Attila—rather let us say the new Caligula, for Attila at least was an open soldier and did not skulk under the Red Cross behind barbed wire fences.
We have long known that all German academic and scholastic officials are the creatures of the Government, as obedient to orders as any Drill Sergeant. They seem to have sold their consciences for place. Not a word comes from them even of regret for the massacre of civilians on false charges, for the wanton murder of children, for the wholesale rape of women, the showering of bombs upon sleeping towns in sheer cruelty of destruction. The intellectual energies of Kultur seem concentrated on distorting the meaning of our dispatches and the speeches of our statesmen, and in manufacturing for their people and neutrals venomous falsehoods. German Geist today is a huge machine to cram lies upon their own people, and to insinuate lies to the world around. Their system of war is based upon lying at home and abroad, on treachery and terrorism. They think that murdering a few civilians would terrify France into surrender, and will drive England to betray the Allies. Their poor conscripts are told that we kill and torture prisoners; their monuments at home are bedizened with mock laurels; and neutrals are poisoned with wild inventions.
For years past their public men, have been tricking our politicians, journalists, and professors to accept them as peaceful leaders of a higher civilization– while all the while their soldiers, diplomats, and spies (the three are really but one class) were secretly courting our own royalties and society, studying our naval and military defenses, filling our homes with tens of thousands of reservists having secret orders to spy, to destroy our arsenals and roads, and even planting out bogus industries and laying concrete bases for cannon, to bombard the open towns of friendly nations. We have been living unsuspectingly with a nation of assassins plotting to destroy us. Did these professors of Kultur not know of this elaborate conspiracy of Kaisertum, which unites the stealthy treachery of a Mohawk or a thug to the miracles of modern science? For years past the ideal of Kultur has been to lay down secret mines to destroy their peaceful neighbors. Did these professors of the Fatheland not know this? Then they are unable to grasp the most obvious facts—the life work of their own masters under their own eyes. And, if they did know it, and must at least know it now, and yet approve and glory in it, they must be beneath contempt. Why argue with such hypocrites?
Not a few of us have known and watched this conspiracy for years. I have preached this ever since the advent of Bismarckism and the new Europe that was formed forty years ago. Not a few of us have foretold not only the tremendous attack on the British Empire designed by German sea power but the precise steps of the war upon France, through Belgium, and to be executed by an overwhelming force of sudden shock in the midst of peace. For my part, nothing in this war since July 30 has at all surprised me, unless it be the foul cruelty with which Belgian civilians have been treated. Indeed, in January, 1913, I wrote a warning which reads now like a summary of events that have since happened. I was denounced as a senile alarmist by some who are now the loudest in calling to arms. Alas! too late is their repentance.
May I ask why our eminent academicians and scholars who still profess "friendship and admiration" for their German confrères never even suspected the huge conspiracy of which civilization has been the victim? Why did they accept the stars and crosses of Caligula-Attila? Why hob-nob with the docile creatures of his chancery, and spread at home and abroad the worship of Geist and Kultur? Are they fit to instruct us about politics, public law, and international relations, when they were so egregiously mistaken, so blind, so befooled, with regard to the most portentous catastrophe in the memory of living men? I am glad that they see their blindness now—but why this sentimental friendliness for those who hoodwinked them?
Surely this should open their eyes to the mountains of pretentious clouds on which the claims of Kultur rest. I am myself a student of German learning, and quite aware of the enormous industry, subtlety, and ingenuity of German scholarship. We owe deep gratitude to the older race of the Savignys, Rankes, Mommsens. Since 1851 I have been five times in Germany on different occasions down to 1900. I read and speak the language, and twice I lived in Germany for months together, even in the house of a distinguished man of science. I study their theology, their sociology, economics, history, and their classics. I am quite aware of the supremacy of German scholars in ancient literature, in many branches of science, in the record of the past in art, manners, and civilization. But to have edited a Greek play or to have discovered a new explosive, a new comet, another microbe, does not qualify a savant to dogmatize on international morals and the hegemony of the world. Sixty years ago in Leipzig the editor of a famous journal undertook to prove to me that Shakespeare was a German. Our poet, he said, was the grandest output of the Teutonic mind; nine-tenths of the Teutonic mind was German-argal, Shakespeare was a German, Q.E.D.
With the vast accumulation of solid knowledge of provable facts there is too often in the German mind a sudden bounding up into a cloudland of crude and unproved guesswork. In the logic of Kultur there seems to be a huge gap in the reasoning of the middle terms. A savant unearths a manuscript in Syria, which he deciphers with marvelous industry, learning, and ingenuity. Straightway he cries, "Eureka, behold the original Gospel—the true Gospel!" and he proceeds to turn Christianity upside down. He may have experimented on cultures of microbes for a generation; and then he calls on earth and heaven to acknowledge the mystery of the self-creation of the universe. We hear much of Treitschke today—no doubt a man of genius with a gift for research—but what ferocious pyrotechnics were poured forth by this apostle of mendacious swagger. And as to Nietzsche, he was anticipated by Shakespeare in Timon—a diseased cynic—
henceforth hated be
Of Timon, man and all humanity.
They seem to think that to have put the critics right about a few lines in Sophocles, or to have discovered a new chemical dye, dispenses the German Superman from being bound to humanity, truthfulness, and honor. Charge them with the mutilation of little girls and the violation of nuns in Belgium, and they reply: Yes! but think of Kant and Hegel! It is treason to philosophy, they say, that a man who has translated Schopenhauer should condemn Germans for burning Malines and making captive women a screen for troops in battle. Kultur, it seems, has its own "higher law," which its professors expound to the decadent nations of Europe.
Let us hold no parley with these arrogant sophists. Let all intellectual commerce be suspended until these official professors have unlearned the infernal code of "military necessity" and "world policy" which, to the indignation of the civilized world, they are ordered by the Vicegerent of God at Potsdam to teach to the great Teutonic Super-race. Yours, &c.,
FREDERIC HARRISON.
Bath, Oct. 29.