The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy of the World War in Relation to Human Liberty by Edward Howard Griggs
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page 8 of 94 (08%)
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to them and why, that heritage surely ought to show in some reaction
against the present autocratic regime, after the War closes, if not before, perhaps even to the extent of making Germany a republic. That would be some compensation for the waste and destruction of the War. Meantime Germany stands now, ruthlessly, for the dedication of Man to the State. One can understand why a Prussian minister forbade the teaching of Froebel's ideas in Prussia during the latter period of the educator's life. So one understands the hatred of Goethe because he refused allegiance to a narrow nationalism and remained cosmopolitan in his world-view. Similarly Hegel, with his justification of absolute monarchy and his theory of the German state as the acme of all spiritual evolution, was the acclaimed orthodox philosopher of Prussia, while the individualist, Schopenhauer, was neglected and despised. One must have lived in Germany to realize the absolute control of the State over the individual--the incessant surveillance, the petty regulations, the constant interference with private life. It was to escape just this vexatious control, with the arduous militarism in which it culminates, that so vast a multitude of Germans left their native land and came to the United States--not all of whom have shown appreciation and loyalty to the free land that welcomed them. III THE IDEAS FOR WHICH THE ALLIED NATIONS FIGHT |
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