Book: Villa Elsa

S >> Stuart Henry >> Villa Elsa




Strange to say, I don't believe I could have stood this
existence here if my system had not got a good cleansing out
when I was sick. I am all the time thinking about the Huns. And
it is strictly necessary hereabouts.




CHAPTER XLIII

THE TEUTON PROBLEM. A SOLUTION


_Flanders, a Mudhole, February, 1915._

... Is not my old friend Anderson's plan the only natural,
practical, efficient method by which to humanize their barbarous
instincts? Assuming that they will be defeated, as they _must_
be, the Anderson project, as you see, is that a permanent
arrangement must be offered them, and if necessary enforced upon
them, whereby a multitude of young German men and women shall be
sent yearly to foreign democratic lands to _live_ and be
educated there for a period. By attractive scholarships, by
pecuniary inducements or by any of a number of programmes, young
Germans can be tempted to this step. In living and studying,
before middle age, under free and liberal conditions, they will
begin looking at foreigners in a friendly, or what we should
call a Christian, manner. After awhile, after generations
perhaps, this leaven will work in the thick, tough, sour Teuton
dough. It will transform the people. They will gradually become
allies at heart instead of remaining hostiles.

As it is now, the German eats, drinks, bathes, and nauseatingly
does other elemental things much as he did a hundred years ago,
because he receives his instruction in his homeland with the
idea, not only complacent but aggressive, that his habits are
the best. And this is for the reason that he has seen no other
kind when young. Do you think, for instance, that a youthful
German, after living in the freedom of our young sexes, would
return to the Rhine and long be content with the iron-like
Teuton customs in love, courtship and marriage?

A youthful person is apt to admire the people among whom he is
staying a long while for the reason that, under such
circumstances, aliens are kind. He will always take pride in
these foreign connections, pride in what he has learned abroad.
He will think himself more fortunate and more advanced than his
fellow stay-at-homes. The young German, becoming used to more
amiable modes of existence, would naturally become more or less
fond of them. A broader, more human social spirit--the true
social spirit--would get a hold in him.

I would go further than my friend Anderson. I would have _all_
civilized countries adopt this plan with one another as well as
with Germany. The trouble with civilization, as seen in this
war, is that no people understands or truly sympathizes with any
foreign nation--not even among the Allies. They are strangers
because they have been kept strangers. This creates suspicion,
envy, enmity, for they have not in any noticeable degree lived
together. They do not know one another's customs, habits,
perspectives. As a result, armies, navies, tariffs, treaties
backed by force, are necessary to hold civilization precariously
in shape--and at what colossal effort, anxiety, expense? The
different languages, literatures, arts, educations, religions,
should become familiar to large numbers in each race and be the
open, peaceful highways back and forth instead of, as now,
barriers.

* * * * *

_Flanders, another Mudhole, February, 1915._

... I see the woeful, tragic need for this international
co-education all around us here at the front. The Canadians,
Australians, English, French, all quarreling back and forth and
pulling against one another as unfriendly strangers.

Germany is giving--has given--one great lesson to them all and
to us Americans at home. And that is, IN UNION THERE IS
STRENGTH.

After this war the tremendous question before the world will be:

_How are we going to live with the Germans?--how get on with
them?_

The only true and gracious solution I can see is--_To associate
and study together when young_! Would not you--would not
everyone--agree that this interchange in education, which would
not be very troublesome or expensive, is a true manner in which
to remove from the German make-up its savage, destructive animus
toward mankind? In order really to change a race, the work must
be done from the inside outward. And this means _some_ form of
education, not merely victories, edicts, Leagues.

Let or make the Teutons be associated with gentler cultures than
their own. What if it does take a hundred, two hundred, years!
What is that compared with having the German problem and menace
unsolved in the future as in the past?

Such young German missionaries year after year, as I have
indicated, would be bringing back something of sweetness and
light to their stubborn, irascible folk. The powerful and
exacerbated bias of this folk toward the _echt Deutsch_ would be
neutralized and mollified under the contact of its youths with
dispositions making for kindliness and courtesy. Confessedly the
stoutest race prejudices lie with those who have never stepped
outside their own boundaries.

It is true this plan, in a small way, was tried under the
exchange of professors scheme. But the Kaiser won out in that
because his professors were too old and, it develops, were
simply his emissaries with hostile inclinations and intent. It
would appear that most of the young Americans who are partly
educated in Germany are pro-German. Had they gone to England or
France, they would be pro-British or pro-French.

It is now being shown that the German's education or instruction
does not do away with the Hun element in him. The logical thing,
then, is to try foreign education on him. He needs to learn in
other countries, and to _live out_, their meanings of good faith
and a give-and-take, manly spirit. For he at present considers
it right to have no respect for his own spoken word to
foreigners, or even his written word.

This is his old habit of the tribal fanatic. To lie to, to
cheat, to steal from, to kill, aliens is no admitted sin in the
moral decalogue of the Germans when an advantage can be derived.
Murder, senseless destruction, violation of women, obscenity, do
not therefore horrify them. If you as a foreigner strike the
metallic shield of their character, no resounding ringing of
what we know as conscience is heard, because extreme erudition
in Germany largely takes the place of moral feelings. "Science
without con_science_ is the death of man." And the women and
State religion are as Hunnish as the males. All these influences
make for war.

This conscienceless dullness, or immense hollowness, in the
Teuton people always suggests to me an eggshell encased in the
pomp of steel. Should they be defeated, I feel that the nation
may cave in tremendously, horribly. How can it be otherwise with
a race that never sees anything foolish in itself, and
exaggerates the core of its costly army and bureaucracy at the
expense of the kernel?

By living abroad a part of their study years the young Germans
would little by little come to prefer to substitute amity for
armaments, confident trust for suspicion, love as a motto
instead of hate. For they would see that other peoples are
worthy to live. They would learn more chivalry toward women and
children, the beautiful significance of humanity and of
universal brotherhood. They would learn that what they call
weakness desirably lends delicacy, tenderness, spiritual and
moral loveliness to existence which the coarse bigness and
bow-wowness of the German ideal itself will never attain....

When March came, and the birds flew back to find no trees, no grass,
no flowers, Gard Kirtley, in his spring-time of life, stepped out
from his dugout in Flanders with a gun, and faced the Huns of the
northeast. He was prepared to greet Death which is the fruit of old
age but which in youth appears as with a crown of laurel.


THE END

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