The professorial pedant who directs the internal administration of the Prussian autocracy has created a system which justly rouses the admiration of all who study the methods of cleverness and ingenuity. The last ounce of food is weighed out, the last egg is counted and distributed, and the last pfennig is taken from the safe of the private individual for the use of the State and replaced by the paper of War Loans. It is an astonishing triumph of economy and skill, but to Raemaekers it is all imposture. Such achievements of mere cleverness mean nothing to him; he knows that this is not the truth of the world, for he cannot hear in it any trace of the harmony and the divine music of the universe; and here he points the real fact that lies under and behind this whole pretentious sham. The very ham which lies on the table is merely wood, painted to look like a ham, while the safe is labelled in Dutch with the words: “All is gold that glitters in here.” The wisdom of experience struck out the proverb “All is not gold that glitters,” but the official direction of the German Empire will have it that everything that glitters in the German _bureau_ is gold. The future will reveal whether that proverb or the new professorial dictum is correct. The Dutch artist has no doubt about it.
The official who is now putting on his coat is going to button it over a great cushion of imposture, which will give him the appearance of good feeding and good condition of body. He has arranged his wares to deceive the people and to make them think that they have everything, when they have only the barest minimum. What more should they require? Everything that is needed is at their disposal, whether it be food or wood. What more could they want? The world wants a good deal more, but the docile German is content--up to a certain point.
The “Black Hole of Calcutta” and the “Well of Cawnpore,” those dark spots on the history of India, stand out in their blackness against fairly light surroundings. Wittenberg, as dark in its way as either, scarcely stands out in the History of Brutality which is the history of the German conduct of the great war.
The terrible thing about Germany is the fact that she seems to have taken out letters patent for vileness; that vileness has become her right and prerogative, and that the neutral nations have accepted the fact as a natural one.