"What is German music from Bach to Beethoven and from Beethoven to
Wagner--yes, even to Richard Strauss--but enthusiasm with discipline?
German music has been our mobilization; it has gone on just as in a
_partitur_ by Richard Wagner--absolute rapture with perfect precision!

"Hence when we saw the miracle of this mobilization--all Germany's
military manhood packed in railway trains, rolling through the land, day
by day and night after night, never a minute late and never a question
for which the right answer was not ready and waiting--when we saw all
this, we were not astonished, because it was no miracle; it was nothing
other than a natural result of a thousand years of work and preparation;
it was the net profit of the whole of German history.

"At the German mobilization not only our brave soldiers, reserves and
militia (_Landwehrmänner und Landstürmler_) entered the field, but the
whole of Germany's historic past marched with them. It was this which
inspired the unshakable confidence which has endured from the first day
of war. In truth, the dear Fatherland has every reason to be calm.

"In the meantime something more has happened: all in a moment we became
Germans! We held our breaths when the Kaiser uttered these words. This
too arose out of the deepest depths of Germany's yearnings; it sounded
like an eagle-cry of our most ancient longings. Germany's soul has long
pined to tear itself from its narrow confines (_verwerden_, as Eckhart,
or _sich entselbsten_, as Goethe put it), to lay aside self-will and
sacrifice itself, to be absorbed in the whole, and yet still to serve
(Wagner). And this eternal German yearning had never reached fulfilment,
but self-interest and egoism have always been stronger; every German has
been at war with all the others. 'For every man to go his own way,' said