of terrorizing hostile peoples--and humanitarianism is condemned as
"sentimentalism and flabby emotion."

There we have the gist of the whole affair--what makes the Frenchman
instinctively consider the German to be a barbarian, what makes modern
Germany the menace of the entire world. It is not its militaristic
ideals, its mechanical civilization, not even its brutality and
vulgarity, not even the ferocity of its warfare: it is the methodical
application of this underlying principle of conduct which has been
inculcated into the people so that they rejoice at the sinking of the
Lusitania, which has been employed in this war systematically from the
first day. This is the barbarian essence of the German character.

It is not the raping of women, not the staff officers' drunken
orgies in chateaux, not the looting and burning of houses, not the
stupid treatment of Belgians and French "hostages," etc. All these
are distressing but not necessarily characteristic. It is the principle
of the legitimacy of evil provided only that evil works to the advantage
of the German state. That is the vicious term in the German syllogism.
The state can do no wrong: therefore the individual acting for the state
can do no wrong. The one supreme end sanctioned by divine authority is
the endurance and the magnification of the German state. Whatever a
German may do or cause to be done with this holy end in view is not
merely just and reasonable, but necessary and praiseworthy. Hence there
follows, naturally, the vile system of German espionage, of propaganda
in neutral countries, the indiscriminate use of the submarine weapon,
terrorization, military murders of civilians, and all the rest of the
long count against Germany. Assume the vital major premise and the rest
follows inevitably, provided her citizens are both docile and have a
natural fund of brutality.