This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ... the poor with untold privations and sufferings. Nor can we entertain any doubt as to the responsibility for the catastrophe. We have every ground for believing that the prime mover in the tragedy was the German military caste, which idealises war as the worthiest exercise of a great people, and the ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ... the poor with untold privations and sufferings. Nor can we entertain any doubt as to the responsibility for the catastrophe. We have every ground for believing that the prime mover in the tragedy was the German military caste, which idealises war as the worthiest exercise of a great people, and the school of the virtues; which has chafed under the inaction of the years of peace; and which has been taught to regard itself as the instrument by which Germany is to be empowered to enter on a wider imperial mission. The Kaiser was believed to hold this ambition in check, but it now seems more probable that his part was only to curb their impatience and to await the favourable hour. The Kaiser, it cannot be doubted, could have stayed the war, and his must be the chief share of the responsibility and the guilt. When we think of the desolation which these have brought upon the earth, and of the horrors in which so many innocent and helpless beings have been involved, we can well understand that there is a place for the wrath of the Lamb, and that a Christian may pray with the apostle--' The Lord reward them according to their works.'1 The case is not mended, but rather aggravated, by the Kaiser's appeals to God. He is deeply religious, after a fashion well known from the Old Testament. He looks on the Germans as the chosen people of those latter days, and upon God as in a peculiar sense 1 2 Tim. iv. 14. their patron and defender. For this faith he has some ground, as we have in our own case. The German people has received from God a rare endowment of talent and industry: it has a large stock of the fundamental virtues; it has in its time fought valiantly in defence of national liberty; and it was the chosen instrument for one of the greatest...
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