Even the Spaniards of the sixteenth century,
when battling with half of Europe for religious unity and the
extermination of heresy, were working toward their ideals obscure and
perhaps erroneous, but disinterested.
All the nations of history had been struggling for something which they
had considered generous and above their own interests. Germany alone,
according to this professor, was trying to impose itself upon the
world in the name of racial superiority--a superiority that nobody had
recognized, that she was arrogating to herself, coating her affirmations
with a varnish of false science.
"Until now wars have been carried on by the soldiery," continued
Hartrott. "That which is now going to begin will be waged by a
combination of soldiers and professors. In its preparation the
University has taken as much part as the military staff. German
science, leader of all sciences, is united forever with what the Latin
revolutionists disdainfully term militarism. Force, mistress of the
world, is what creates right, that which our truly unique civilization
imposes. Our armies are the representatives of our culture, and in a
few weeks we shall free the world from its decadence, completely
rejuvenating it."
The vision of the immense future of his race was leading him on to
expose himself with lyrical enthusiasm. William I, Bismarck, all the
heroes of past victories, inspired his veneration, but he spoke of them
as dying gods whose hour had passed.
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