The Conservative (Lovecraft)/October 1916/Prussianism

That the present conflict of nations was originated by an overbearing Prussian military autocracy, joined to a ravenous Prussian commercial ambition; and that its object was to achieve for Prussia in one superhuman effort the military and economic control of Europe, ​and the practical domination of the world; is today the general verdict of mankind. Ever since its foundation in the hour of victory over Louis Napoleon, the German Empire has boon filled with the literature of war. The business of war has boon taught, preached, fastened, and inculcated in every conceivable way; firearms have, figuratively speaking, been displayed in the front windows, whilst on every frontier the machinery of war has rattled its ominous challenge. Never was a nation so diligently prepared and so efficiently equipped for war, years in advance of all its possible adversaries. And when this marvellous mechanism was unloosed, its ono aim was nothing less than the supremacy of the world.

The brutal acts of Germany in her headlong rush through Belgium toward Paris can never be justified or disavowed. The orders came from Berlin, and German officials uphold and encouraged crimes of the most outrageous sort, in which every law of civilised warfare and every principle of human ethics were flagrantly violated. But the world was to hear of outrages still more atrocious. In the sinking of the Lusitania, Prussian officialdom cunningly planned and executed one of the most revolting crimes in history. Citizens of the neutral nations had hitherto been content to rest in an attitude of silent disapproval; but now, when the German vulture waved her bloody plumes over the corpses of their own wives, sisters, mothers, children, and unoffending civilian countrymen in ghastly premeditated murder, they forgot their formal, cold-blooded "neutrality," and felt that the indescribable Crime of Crimes fairly shrieked for requital.

By acts such as these, Germany has become the Ishmael of the nations. With her hand against every man now, every man's hand will be against her in the years to come. How, after the war, will she cope with the righteous indignation of the world in her efforts to reconstruct her lost foreign commerce? Unhappily, the guilty will not suffer alone; for there are in America many honest and innocent persons of German descent, who will feel cruelly the universal condemnation of all that attaches to the German name.

Had she but preserved peace, Germany might have become a fairly close second to England in power; but through her silliness in maintaining the notion of a racial superiority that must be demonstrated by powder, she is doomed to be ruined by her own strength. As to the future; the ultimate and inevitable defeat of the Central Powers may restore to the world that nobler Germany we knew before she went insane. Had she conquered Europe and seized vast territories, she would undoubtedly have experienced that racial and spiritual degeneration and final ruin, which befell Imperial Rome. Having caused years of misery for others, she would have dragged herself down with them into a grave of lost civilisation.

The present vaunted unity of the German Empire is nothing more or less than a slavery of all the lesser States under Prussia. Prussia not only regards the more desirable type of Germans as mere vassals; but suppresses liberty of every sort amongst them, including that of the press. It is under compulsion that the people of the other German States are fighting Prussia's infamous battles, and dying for her shameful cause.

​When Germany declared war on Russia and France, it was her intention to seize France at once, for use as an indemnity to defray the cost of the war. With the failure of this attempt, and with the wholly unexpected prolongation of hostilities, German thinkers have come to see bankruptcy staring them in the face. Since it has been proven that German treaties cannot be relied upon, even those nations not actually allied against Prussia know that she must be thoroughly crushed. What guarantee of stable peace, they ask, can be obtained from treating with Kaiser Wilhelm; or in case of his death, with his successor, the present Crown Prince? This precious pair and their ilk are too well known to be trusted. In full self-government by the German people lies the only hope of a permanent pacific adjustment. But the end cannot be far off. The ruling element of Germany know that they have thrown the last great group, the volunteers, into the maelstrom of battle, and that nothing more remains. They know that lacking a miracle, England and her brave Allies have won. British, French, and Russian generals are not fighting for empty geographical progress; they are fighting to kill men, the human serpents that have been arrayed against civilisation; and before the present great offensive movement shall have attained its climax, they will have killed more Germans than Germany can spare. The Kaiser and his satellites will be more than ready to make peace before the inevitable collapse begins. They desire to save appearances before their subjects, whose independent will they have come to fear. As a whole, this war can mean to Germany but one thing; the dawn of a new liberty for the people; for the majority of Germans will no longer tolerate a Prussian dictator who values them only as "kanone-futter."