. .
What was most irritating Tchernoff was the moral lesson born of this
situation which had ended by overwhelming the world--the glorification
of power, the sanctification of success, the triumph of materialism, the
respect for the accomplished fact, the mockery of the noblest sentiments
as though they were merely sonorous and absurd phrases, the reversal
of moral values . . . a philosophy of bandits which pretended to be
the last word of progress, and was no more than a return to despotism,
violence, and the barbarity of the most primitive epochs of history.
While he was longing for the suppression of the representatives of
this tendency, he would not, therefore, demand the extermination of the
German people.
"This nation has great merits jumbled with bad conditions inherited
from a not far-distant, barbarous past. It possesses the genius of
organization and work, and is able to lend great service to humanity.
. . . But first it is necessary to give it a douche--the douche of
downfall. The Germans are mad with pride and their madness threatens
the security of the world. When those who have poisoned them with the
illusion of universal hegemony have disappeared, when misfortune has
freshened their imagination and transformed them into a community of
humans, neither superior nor inferior to the rest of mankind, they will
become a tolerant people, useful .
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