A TEUTONIC STUDY.

Bruce Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 73, 17 September 1917, Page 4

A TEUTONIC STUDY.

i THE BARBAROUS HUNS. AFFLICTED WITH 'ATAVISM. j An American physieiar. who received a large part of his training in Germany, and who* at the outbreak of the war was strongly pro-German in sentiment, has been making an effort to account for the barbaric war spirit of the Teutons by a study of their remote past. It was difficult for him to overcome his German predelictions, which he admitted were almost in the nature of an obsession, until his Yankee patriotism unsealed his eyes. He believes now that he is able to think coherently and without bias, and the result of his modi-

i tatious has revealed to him another sort of Germany than the one he blindly followed in philosophy and science for more than a score of years. This physician, who has Teutonic friends in America and in 'Germany, and naturally does not want his name published, believes he has found out what is the matter with Germany. He declares that she is afflicted with atavism. Some scientists assert, he points out, that this form of mental reversion when manifest in the individual may be characterised as insanity. Occasionally, as records attest, whole communities have been thrown back to barbaric type through the seizure by dominating personalties of governmental directing forces. Witchcraft in New England, involving the sacrifice of innocent lives, might be cited as illustrative of the idea. "The naturalised German, as we met'him before the war," the medical observer says, "never had the pure .patriotism of the native American. He never has been able to rid himself of the super prejudice that inspires him to place his native land above all, even if be fled it to escape military service.. The older German fought for the Union in t'he civil war, but he did not fight against Germans, as Briton did against Briton in our own Kevolution. This is the first crisis in his history wherein he has been called upon to oppose his native people, and there is no present evidence that he is hollering for Uncle Sam. The attitude of his clubs all over the Union shows this. Apparently he is an American for revenue only, utterly eclipsing the fictitious Yankee who was for the 'old (lagjuid an appropriation.' The obsession of the Kaiserbund reaches far abroad, from Greenland's icy mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. On its native heath it has existed possibly several thousand years. Gibbon gives us a, fairly good history of it as lie gleaned it from Tacitus and historians of a later date, it will be noted that | in the first hundred years of the Christian era the German spirit is the same savage sort that still persists in Deutsohland and has been transplanted to some extent to other fields of German military endeavour. It shows a revival of the barbarian, a reversion to type, atavism, a startling national insanity based upon a past without high ideals. When we-look upon the military organisation of Germany, built mainly on the idea of spreading terror, ;ve are impelled, if we know anything of primitive German his'tory, to think of what the Germans were before they became a nation. The 'Death's Jlea.il Hussars' is a conspicuous revival of the rude- German spirit of frightfulness. Think soberly, if you can, of the utter Jack of humour in the souls of a people who devise such helmets-to scare their enemies! Think seriously, also, if you can, of that fearsome goose step intended' to inspire awe among the foes j of the Kaiser. It suggests the war dance of the North American Indian in the days before he went into the show business. 'Gui/.ot in his 'History of Civilisation' compares the Germans of Tacitus with our gentler Indians. To get a glimpse of the ancient German, whose barbaric spirit apparently has been revived to muddle terrestrial tilings, let us look at him in the year 100 A. D., or thereabout, as Gibbon pictures him: 'The Germans in the age of Tacitus were unacquainted with the use of letters, and the use of letters is the principal circumstance that distinguishes' a civilised people from a herd of savages incapable of knowledge or reflection Without some species of writing no people has ever preserved the faithful annals of their history, ever made any considerable progress in the abstract sciences or ever possessed in any tolerable degree of perfection the useful and agreeable arts of life. Of these arts the ancient Germans were wretchedly destitute. They passed their lives in a state of ignorance, whic'h it has pleased • some declaimers to dignify with the appellation of virtuous simplicity. .... The sound that summoned the German to arms was grateful to his ear. it roused him from uncomfortable lethargy, gave him an active pursuit, and l)y strong exercise of the body and i violent emotions of the mind restored him to a more lively sense of his existence.' Gibbon ' comes pretty close to the bullseye in these sentences: 'Strong beer was sufficient for the purposes of German debauchery. But those who had tasted the rich wines of Italy, and afterward of Gaul, sighed for the more delicious species of intoxication.' [This recalls the German invasion of the Champagne district and the iconoclastic spree that followed.] 'They attempted, not however as has been executed since with so much success, to naturalise the vine on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube; nor did they endeavour to procure, by industry the materials of an advantageous commerce. To solicit by labour what might be ravished by arms was esteemed unworthy of the German spirit. The intemperate thirst for strong liquors often urged the barbarians to invade the provinces on which art or nature had bestowed those much envied presents.' We are irresistibly reminded' of the blasphemy of t'he Kaiser in claiming a partnership with the Deity iu these parages from Gibbon: 'But -tha influence of religion was far more powerful to inflame than to moderate the fierce passions of the

Germans. Interest and fanaticism ofteir .prompted its ministers to sanctify the most daring and the most unjust enterprises by -the api)robation of heaven and by full assurances of success. The consecrated staudards [heads of wild beasts, vividly suggesting the modern terror emblem of the freak hussars], 'long revered in the .groves of superstition, were placed in the front of battle, and the hostile army was devoted, with dire execrations' [Gott strafe everybody!] 'to the gods of war and thunder.' From these historical references it may not be improper to say that the matter with Germany appears to be that she has drifted back to the primitivism of tlie days when Marseilles was a cultured Gallic city, founded by the idealistic Greeks and breeding the soul stuff that is helping to overwhelm the barbarians."