"CULTURE" AND BELGIUM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15766, 14 November 1914, Page 1 (Supplement)

"CULTURE" AND BELGIUM.

Br TOHTOGA.

If there is one thing of which the German boasts it is his "culture/' In hia books, in his newspapers, in his speeches and in his lectures, by his writers, his journalists, his politicians and his profetors, it is asserted to set him apart from the rest of the world and make him a fnecies distinct from any other known, in < ivilUation. It dues. "Look at" Belgium ! "it- is a bacteriological culture," commented a. plain Auckland citizen. It is. A bacteriological culture that finds its breeding-ground in the brutish soul that turns its back upon every ray of divine sunlight and plunges back into the dark

abyss from which Humanity has long j nought to ascend ! 11 is the most infamous i ullurn ever engendered and developed upon tin'* fair earth of ours, for it makes a philosophy oi that which is evil, a religion of that which is satanic indeed. It, is Anti-Christ, this vaunted Germain "cultuic." It i, worse than Anti-Christ, for it denies the nobility of paganism, the humanity of the Koran, the chivalry that has distinguished so many of the heathen, need.'. If you doubt it, think a littlei of Belgium '. ! 'I lie .111, icut creed of our pagan forefathers was by no means vile. The men who swarmed from Scandinavia and Jutland, front the old Augleland and the grout forests east of the Rhine, to the [<on.|uest of the tottering lioman Empire, ; wci.i not wholly inhuman. They ; were .nitl.-.w owing to the inability <•! Unman rule to understand and provide I for the local .self-government winch was insliintivo with the peoples who have I >in« evolved what we now call democracy and who have gradually made it possible for nil the nations of the earth to dwell in peace. What tho "cultured" German thinks of democracy we know bv his j institutions, what he thinks of peace we ' an *et: in Belgium. The thought that we call Christian made its peaceful conquest of the western world and won the acceptance of the dominating minds of the very fighting j racts of Noith Europe because, for ceni tunosandniillcniums the soul of Humanityhad been preparing for it, because even | .'•" paganism there had been the glimmerI nig of better things. "Odin is greater i than Jahvr ;■' dies the "cultured" Ger-

man. seeking in a by-gone creed for symbolism that will express his contempt for the teaching of the -Man of Sorrows and his idealising of sheer brute Force above sill other qualities essential to a nation that would live and not die. Yet if the "cultured" German dared to face

the truth he would, admit that the crude

i Odin worship of our Teutonic forefathers j was ledeetned from the All Evil by the conception of Haider. Balder was self-

sacrificing and loving, daring for others. and kindly to all the sons of men. Balder ■■'.as the pagan incarnation of the eternal truth that is implanted in all aspirant hearts, the truth that the Eight must triumph in the end even though it seems to perish, that Might alone does not rule the God's universe, that to be tender and merciful is to acknowledge the attributes lof the Most High. In this ferocious "culture" that swings a people back to paganism we hear of Odin but never of Balder.

We look in vain for thought of Balder in the German treatment of Belgium. If we take our own Bible we can see that the Old Testament gradually prepares the way for the new. Through many of the Psalms gleams the finer Christian spoil, in Isaiah it rings true, in the later prophets gentleness and loving kindness are met together, mercy and peace havekissed each other. The .Sermon on the Mount does not come as a lightning-flash, that displays the gloom and leaves darker darkness in its train but as the rising of the sun through the pearl-grey dawning and the golden sky that long heralds and slowly ushers in the coming day. So it was with the old, old faith of out pagan biies in kindly Balder, which ploughed and harrowed the minds of Northern men and women for the sowing of the Christian creed and made the story of tho Christ and the teaching that the strong should guard the weak and the Right ho followed even though it led to death, a thing nut strange and alien and repellant to them but as the reality of a vision they had longed for and loved. For many a century that story and that teaching have been with us, softening the hardness of our hearts, guiding our stumbling feet through thorny places, triumphing in spite of ourselves over our bigotries and our misconceptions, moulding our laws and fashioning our customs, shaming us from our brutishness and our cruelties, teaching us to be merciful as wo would have mercy, to forgive as we would be forgiven. Our modern democracy, with its unprecedented humanity and its inherent hope for the, progress of mankind, is a demonstration of its effect upon cur inner selves. German "culture" is a bald and deliberate negation, not only of the dogmas which do nol matter but of tho doctrines that matter wholly, not only of the letter that killeth but 'of the spirit that keepeth alive. For tho fruit of that '" culture.'' look at Belgium! In the great German tragedy of "Faust," we have, the weakness of the Get man mind displayed before us by the greatest of all Germans, the only continental who has matched our Rhakespc.ro in unerring understanding of the mysterious inwardness of men. Bead to-day. it has a, new moaning and a new significance, applying itself to the things that are in tho way that marks the incomprehensible gift of true genius. Everybody knows the story, how Faust, tempted, sells his soul for the material things he craves and what comes of it. Well, Germany has sold its soul, It has bartered its honour, its truth, its humanity, its belief in Right, its faith in democracy, its duty to tho nations and its own conscience, for the satanic promise of Power. It has had Power- -in Belgium.

J hero are -lines when we should he frank in our speaking, when above all things ii is necessary that we should know the truth of things. Herman "culture" is not confined to the. Kaiser, or 10 Yon Kluck, or Bernhardi, or to Nietzsche and his disciples. It lias saturated the entire nation. It has made the average German, for the lime being, an inhuman and conscienceless bruteLook at Belgium! What was its fault? hat is its fate '! There has been Hotliing so appalling in the history of men, in tin' bloodstained, lust-soiled traditions of nations, for never before has a civilised people, who work. live, think, look, and arc a-< we nie. been so utterly helpless in) the giip of such bestial and brutal inva'.ii Let any man who reads this think of his little children and his wife and his daughters, of Ids old mother and Ins sweetheart, of the friendly faces that lie joys to see and the multitude of men and women and little, ones who in town and country make the kindred nation that is his own' Let any woman think of her dearest self, law guarded in this peaceful laud, and of the tender little thine* that bring their childish joys and childish sorrows to her knees! So they were in Belgium. Not a loving care of ours which was not known to them, not a thought of ours they did not think, not a hope of ours they did not, know, not an agony hey suffered which would not drip drop by drop, from our own breaking hearts, if these Germans came, these Germans who have sold their souls for Power, who worship Anti-Christ and boast their infamous "culture!" Think of a German host in England, Ireland. Scotland, Wales, us in Belgium! Think of it in New Zealand, here in Auckland! And remember, that if these German hosts can do it they will batter their way to England and to us-—and that the Germans in our midst would help them do it. Only when we grasp the fact that those whom we have known as friendly and abiding sojourners in our British lands would unhesitatingly bring this unspeakable invasion upon us if they could, can we realise how the average German mind has been perverted and corrupted by German, .culture,