German occupation

“ In several ways Germany has excellence and possibilities of great service to humanity. In original research and invention, in applied science and in science itself, in scholarship, and in social and industrial development and organization, the German has shown himself to be a pioneer. ”

“ The leaders of industry are largely German, most of the towns, and the greater landed aristocracy for the most part. But the mass of the population is not German-speaking, and even of the German-speaking minority only a minority again are in any sympathy with the united German feeling to the west. ”

“ The great and expanding German people required land within the German Empire in which the surplus population might find room and yet remain German. Outlet must be found for German talent, organizing capacity, capital, manufactures, and the necessary supplies of raw material must be forthcoming. ”

“ It must be remembered that the German artisan is ruled in everything by the state; for while English workmen, by their own collective will, raise up their trade or other societies, in whatever form or to whatever purpose their intelligence or their caprices may dictate to them, the German, on the contrary, discovers among his very first perceptions that his position and treatment in the world is already fixed and irrevocable. ”

“ The German sought the land, was content to be let alone, had no desire to command others or to mix with them, but was determined to be reliable, philosophically took things as they came, met opposition with patience, clung doggedly to a few cherished convictions, and sought passionately to possess a home and a family, to master some minute mechanical or technical detail, and to take his leisure and his amusements in his own customary way. ”

“ As a rule, a German who expects to engage in business takes a four years' course in some commercial school, and after graduation serves three years' apprenticeship without pay, to his chosen business.
Thoroughness and reliability, the German's characteristics, are increasing the power of Germany throughout the civilized world. ”

“ Somehow the German always made me feel that his war determination had been organised for him.
Organisation is the glory and the curse of Germany. The Germans are by nature and training easily influenced, and as a mass they can be led as readily in the right path as in the wrong. ”

“ Such a thing as a German railway conductor rising to be president of the road is an impossibility in Germany; and the list of self-made men is small indeed,--by that I mean men who have risen from the ranks of the working-men. ”

“ And yet when you hear, "The Germans are advancing! They are coming!" the German army seems to take on a supernatural aspect, to become a ruthless machine that drives everything before it in its advance, and in its wake leaves a country stripped of life—all the people and cottages rubbed off the face of the earth. ”

“ Germany under a highly autocratic system of government has created a social machine of unexampled and formidable efficiency. The German realized before his rivals that war had become, like all other human activities, a matter of business on a huge scale. ”

“ In the community of cultured nations Germany will again play, as she did before the war, the rôle of the nation with the greatest capacity for labor, and will once more march victoriously in the van in peaceful competition, offering not only to herself, but to all the nations of the earth, whatever is best in the domain of technical achievement, of science, of art. ”

“ There is the German nation of our day, the most aggressive in various fields of intellectual activity, a Hercules of scholarship, the most thoroughly trained and powerful—though its civilization marches to the noise of the hateful and barbarous drum. ”

“ German education is open to grave indictment as regards the spirit and temper it has bred, but withal the Germans are an educated people, and an educated people knows how to employ its leisure.
The longer you live in the Occupied Area, the more sphinx-like the riddle it presents—the riddle of reconciling the behaviour of these decent, self-respecting people among whom you find yourself with the actions of that collective entity, Germany, who figures as the outcast of Europe. ”

“ And still there are men in America who despair of the vitality of the Germans, of their indomitable power to resist oppression, of their love of freedom, and of their devotion to it, proved by a glorious history of two thousand years. The German race is a power, the vitality and influence of which you can trace through the world's history for two thousand years; you can trace it through the history of science and heroism, of industry, and of bold enterprizing spirit. ”

“ I stayed upwards of a month with Henry, and then came hither über Paris, where I stayed ten days. I have been here two and a half weeks, taking the baths, and enjoying the feeling of the strong, calm, successful, new German civilization all about me. Germany is great, and no mistake! But what a contrast, in the well-set-up, well-groomed, smart-looking German man of today, and his rather clumsily drest, dingy, and unworldly-looking father of forty years ago! ”

“ Had not the uprising of the peasants been shamefully betrayed by the leaders of German culture and civilization, the development of the nation would, at that time, have already assumed a normal form, and not only would Germany be the equal of the other civilized nations, but as the first-born modern nation, would have held the roost prominent place among them. ”

“ My earnest hope is that every member of this illustrious race, while he may cherish the particular country of his birth as he does his home, will extend his devotion beyond its narrow limits, and exult in the name of a German, and recognize the claim of Germany to the love and affection and patriotic exertions of all her sons. ”

“ Yet nothing that the heroes of labor execute goes beyond our own border." And the most extraordinary thing is that those who do not in the least deny this condition to which Germany has fallen—who, indeed, exaggerate it, and ask us with triumph to look upon the brutality of German method and German conception—ask us to go and follow Germany's example! ”

“ If Germany, my beloved fatherland, of whom you know I am proud, will not accept me, then must I, in the name of God, again make France or England richer by one capable German;—and to the shame of the German nation. ”

“ Men such as he have rendered services valuable beyond any price in almost all ranks of commerce, and Germany’s military orders were to get them at any price, all of them, for German-controlled concerns. Such men have helped give Germany her tremendous and powerful place in the commerce of the world. This unique genius in research, this ability to divine elemental secrets, allied with the hard working, abstemious, thrifty, free-breeding traits of the German people, made that nation very strong in her position among the world forces. ”

“ The general situation of the German Empire in the period before the war had become continually more brilliant, and for that very reason continually more difficult from the point of view of foreign politics. Unprecedented progress in industry, commerce, and world traffic had made Germany prosperous. The curve of our development tended steadily upward. ”

“ In education and science this is especially the case. Pedants always admire pedants. And Germany having shown herself to be easily first of European States in her pedant-manufacturing machinery, all the assembled dominies of all the rest of the world exclaimed with one voice, "Go to! Let us Germanise our educational system!"
Now, the German is an excellent workman in his way. Patient, laborious, conscientious, he has all the highest qualities of the ideal brick-maker. He produces the best bricks, and you can generally depend upon him to turn out both honest and workmanlike articles. ”

“ The peculiar virtues of the German character, the native strength of the German intellect, were slighted, concealed, and as far as possible suppressed, while the artificial graces of an exotic refinement were affectedly displayed, and became the only pass into good society. ”

“ Since then the war has flashed a brilliant light on the dark places of German intrigue, and some of the sights revealed are hardly credible. Whithersoever one turns one is confronted with the same striking phenomenon; the preponderant influence wielded in almost every walk of life, private and public, by institutions and individuals who in some open or clandestine way are under German tutelage. ”

“ Now, we know what the German men are. These women are the mothers and wives and sisters of the German men; in other words, they are Germans, body, and bone and brain-cells, capable of precisely the same ruthless tactics when pushed too hard—if they have a leader. ”

“ Perhaps it is well to remind American readers, who are accustomed to dealing with large, simple, and plainly demarcated political and economic units, that in Europe there are many millions of Germans outside the German Empire who take an active part in their nation's essential and ultimate destiny—by which I do not mean its political destiny. ”

“ Let me, then, ask for a moment what is this German culture—what is this German spirit of which the Emperor's Armies are at present the missionaries in Belgium and France? [Laughter.] Mankind owes much to Germany—a very great debt—for the contributions she has made to philosophy, to science, and to the arts ”

“ In power of endurance the Germans are surpassed by the Slavic race, in agility by the Latin. The prominent features of the German national character are honesty, faithfulness, valor, thoughtfulness, perseverance, and industry. ”

“ What an extraordinary mixture the Germans are, brave, conceited, sentimental, prosaic, patriotic, and yet no people so soon lose their national characteristics, and become citizens of another country as Germans. ”

“ The German capacity for work is our gold and our capital, and with this gold I can compete successfully with any power in the world. We want to live in houses which have to be built. Hence, the workers must build them, and the raw materials required must be procured by work. ”

“ The honesty and integrity of the German mind, the strength of the German intellect, the skill of the German hand and brain, and justice and vigour of German law, the intensity of German culture, science, education and social development, these need a great and healthy field for their beneficial display, and the world needs these things more than it needs the British mastery of the seas. ”

“ They are no less proud of having expounded to modern Europe for the first time through the immortal Copernicus a correct notion of the world we live in and the worlds around us. The Germans as pioneers of modern civilization.The contributions of the German race to modern civilization and modern thought are thus of a very high order,—and if we can believe patriotic German historians, modern civilization and modern history are German civilization and German history! ”

“ I have sufficient confidence in the German laborers to believe that they are conscious of the extreme seriousness of the present moment and that, as German men, they will find a solution for this difficult question. ”

“ By means of the new education we want to mould the Germans into a corporate body, which shall be stimulated and animated in all its individual members by the same interest. ”

“ Thousands of Englishmen make their homes in German cities; find German ways of living, if anything, suit them better. Suddenly there arises the question, shall English ways of life or German ways of life prevail: English or German culture—which shall it be? And the English who have lived contentedly in Germany for years hasten back to fight for England, and the desire of every German in England is to break up his pleasant home among us and fight to bring all Europe into German ways of thinking. ”

“ There has always been a want of wit in Germany, and mediocre heads attain there to the highest honours, because even they are rare. What is most highly prized is diligence and perseverance and a certain cold-blooded, critical outlook, and, for the sake of such Qualities, German scholarship and the German military system have become paramount in Europe. ”

“ Owing to the geographical situation of Germany and to the political configuration of its peoples and other causes, mediæval conditions of life as we find them in the early sixteenth century left more abiding traces on the German mind and on German culture than was the case with some other nations. ”

“ Now we're learning to farm scientifically and to conserve our wealth. And this is due in no small degree to the Germans. The German, emancipated from feudalism and kaiserism, is a pretty good citizen. In fact, among the men who have most helped modern America we reckon Germans and Irishmen. ”

“ There is great significance in the impression which foreign workers get in studying Germany's social legislation. A few years before the war people [Pg 44] in England, under the pressure of labor troubles, awoke to the conviction that better care must be taken of the workers. As a result of this, commissions visited Germany, some of them composed of workingmen. Guided by representative Germans, among them Socialists, they visited the industrial regions, factories, benevolent institutions, sanatoria of insurance companies, etc., and were astonished at all the things they saw. ”

“ German wares were considered to be cheap and nasty, until the land grew rich, and brought about the co-operation of its forces of science and technique, production and marketing, auxiliary industries and remote profits, finance and commerce, education and training, judgment and criticism, habits of life and a sense of comparative values. ”

“ In France, Belgium and Holland the industries work for the German war economy exclusively, and must always be supplied with labor in any case;
2. Great numbers of workers must be placed at the disposal of the German economy within the Reich itself. ”