and fair-minded Americans are not slow to recognise Germany's great
contributions to the world's art, literature, and science, they believe
that, with the possible exception of music, greater contributions have
been made in these lines by France, England, and other nations. In the
realm of invention, we fully appreciate the skill and resourcefulness
manifested by the German people in adapting new discoveries to their own
needs; but we cannot deny the fact that most of the discoveries which
have played so vital a part in the development of modern civilisation
have been made, not in Germany, but in other countries.

In regard to municipal government and various forms of social
legislation, we have long recognised the high position held by your
nation. But in the more vital matter of the relation of the individual to
the supreme governing power, we have always held, and still believe,
that Germany is sadly reactionary. For half a century your professors,
in the employ of an educational system controlled by a bureaucratic
Government, have taught what we condemn as a false philosophy of
government. Your histories, your books on philosophy, your whole
literature, glorify the _State_; and you have accepted the dangerous
doctrine that the individual exists to serve the State, forgetting that
the State is not the mystical, divine thing you picture it, but a
government carried on by human beings like yourselves, most of them
reasonably upright, but some incompetent and others deliberately bad,
just like any other human government. We believe that the only excuse
for the existence of the State is to serve the individual, to create
conditions which will insure the greatest liberty and highest possible
development to the individual citizen. It has never seemed to us
creditable to the German intellect that it could be satisfied with a
theory of government outgrown by most other civilised nations. That you
should confuse efficiency with freedom has always seemed to us a tragic