The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War by D. Thomas Curtin
page 31 of 320 (09%)
page 31 of 320 (09%)
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These pastors are in communication with the German-American Lutherans in the United States, who exerted their influence to the utmost against the election of President Wilson, taking their instructions indirectly from the German Foreign Office. The state of affairs in the German churches is so different from anything on the other side of the Atlantic, and in Great Britain, that it is almost as difficult to make people in England understand war-preaching ministers as it is to make them comprehend war-teaching schoolmasters. My description of the poisoning by hate songs of the child mind of Germany at its most impressionable age came as a shock to many of my readers. But the hate songs of the children are not as fierce as the hate hymns and prayers of the pastors. Do the public here realise that of the original Zeppelin fund hundreds of thousands of marks were subscribed in churches and chapels, and that models of Zeppelins have formed portions of church decorations at festivals? The pastors of the Prussian State Church are in one important respect the exact opposite of Martin Luther. He was thoroughly independent in spirit and rebelled against authority; they are abjectly submissive to it. As with the professor, so with the pastor, it is no mere accident that he is a puppet-tool of the State. The German Government leaves nothing to chance, and realising to the fullest the importance of docile and unified subjects both for interior rule and exterior conquest, it deliberately and artfully regulates those who create public opinion. |
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