They are pandering to the lowest instincts of the people, and enervating their manhood by every artifice in their power.

Thus they have successfully achieved the introduction into Germany of that most degraded form of self-worship--Chauvinism.

They poison her morality by wisely organizing that every conscience, every conviction, should have its price.

They debase her ideals by decreeing that henceforth the officer is to be the national patron saint to whom the people are to offer up their devotion and worship.

The press, literature, art, lecturing-room--all preach the same gospel, that the highest product of humanity is the officer, and that "soldierly discipline and smartness"-- in other words, slavish submission, self-conceit, arrogance, and the upholding of mere brute force--are the noblest qualities of a man and a patriot.