Hating Backwards

Why Not Stop Strafing the Dead Huns and Give More Attention to the Live Ones?

FRANK MOORE COLBY

WHY not skip the early Germans? No sooner do the bombs begin to fall again upon the Rheims Cathedral than some one writes a letter to a newspaper about the morals of the Marcomanni, and if there is a pro-German in the neighborhood he retorts that according to Tacitus the family life of the early Germans was very pure. This brings out a third man with a quotation from Velleins Paterculus to the effect that so early as the first century A. D. every German was already a liar. And they are putting this sort of thing into the war books. I gather from many of these writers that the longer you look at an early German the less you will like him, but I cannot guess from any one of them why it is necessary to look at him at all. If it is for the nourishment of warlike sentiment—and that seems to be the purpose of these authors— it is surely much better to look at Count von Reventlow, or at a pan-Germanist pamphlet or at almost any German Lutheran divine.

AND here is the danger in hating the Germans too far back in their history: It detracts the mind from things, which, for present purposes, are more worthy of attention. When one has for his contemplation an event so rich in hostile significance as the sinking of the Lusitania, for instance, it seems a pity to turn back and curse the Cimbrians who lived before Christ. Suppose Tacitus was quite wrong in saying that the early Germans were often chaste and sometimes sober, if that is what he did say; suppose after immense historical exertions I could prove that they were never sober and seldom chaste; why should I bother people by mentioning it? I do not deny that the doings in the underbrush of the Teutoberg forest, say, about the year 50 A. D., may well have been perfectly scandalous, but I do deny that the point is of the slightest belligerent value to us in our present frame of mind. Should I happen on some Hohenzollern, for example, engaged in poisoning a well, it would be no relief to my feelings to hear some one with a far-off look in his eyes exclaim,

"Why, how like Ariovistus!"—even if it should be established that Ariovistus had poisoned a well. I cannot at the present crisis hate a Quadus of the first century; I cannot even hate an Alemannus of the second, not because I doubt, that they were detestable, but because I have not the time. Germans of my own day are too engrossing.

EVEN SO versatile a hater as Mr. G. K. Chesterton has to draw the line somewhere. Mr. Chesterton can hate Germans all through the Middle Ages. He can hate all of Prussia from the earliest times down to the present moment, and all the Teutonic Knights, and every minute in the life of each Elector of Brandenburg. If shells were bursting on the women of his neighborhood, he would probably attack at once (and with the utmost fury) the character of Frederick the Great, and in the course of the same article in the London Illustrated News he might find time also for an unfavorable mention of the writings of Walther von der Vogelweide. But even. Mr. Chesterton hardly ever hates a German of the Dark Ages; and Germans of the first four centuries of the Christian era, Germans of Caesar's time, bad manners of the Marcomanni, the home life of Arminius and Marbadius—all these are matters which, I believe, have hitherto almost wholly escaped him. Subjects of a more nearly contemporaneous interest seem to have crowded them out of his mind.

NO doubt all these writers believe they are doing some damage to the enemy, but on the whole their work seems rather ineffective. When a man on hearing of some fresh German massacre of non-combatants complains that Alboin the Langobardus was very unkind to his wife, making her drink wine in a most disagreeable manner—from a cup sawed out of her murdered father's skull—it does not seem like indignation; it seems like absence of mind. Perhaps absent-mindedness, after all, accounts for most of these singular diversions. When a member of the Hohenzollern family sets the dogs on the women in a Frenchman's park, steals everything he can lay his hands on and then blows up the castle, perhaps the writer really falls into a sort of historic doze—goes wool-gathering so to speak, among the Gepidae, or in a bit of abstraction attacks Theodoric the Ostrogoth, or fumbles absently about for something sarcastic that might be said about the sacred oak of Geisman. Given for inspection some particularly loathsome type of present-day Prussian, it may be that he forgets absolutely to say anything about the Prussian, and is under some mysterious compulsion to give Alaric, King of the Visigoths, a piece of his mind. It cannot be set down to mere pedantry, for the scraps they use are ready to hand in the cyclopaedias and the school-books, and as for any historical value in these comparisons, there is none. Probably they do really wish to say something appropriate to the Germans as we know them, but the moment they begin to do it, their thoughts go wandering away.

THE same issue of a newspaper which commented with natural indignation the other day on the brutalities of Prince Eitel at Avricourt, remarked with equal indignation the misbehavior of the German Emperor Adolphus of Nassau in the year 1293. It repeated a not very pointed story to the effect that Philip the Fair of France, when Adolphus demanded that he recognize the imperial claim to the County of Burgundy, replied simply: "Nimis, Germane!" or "German person, that's too much!" What a wealth of merited contempt, pointed out the commentator, in calling Adolphus just a German person, dropping the flourishes of royal courtesy and all that, for what was Adolphus after all but "a mere German, the same lustful, predatory, pillaging, barbarous being that we know today!" And he concluded in this high manner: "We too may say today, as we did then, 'Nimis, Germane!' These are historic words which comfort us and make us quiver with all the pride, traditions, and memories of our race—which rise from history as from a tomb and confront the enemy: 'Nimis, Germane!' ''.

THERE is no need of going further with these instances, for they can be had in any newspaper. Of course, if I thought, that they elevated any one of us or cast one single German down, I would not breathe a word against them; but I believe they confuse our minds rather than elate them. Let us consider a little tediously, for example, this instance about Philip and Adolphus, giving it more attention as a warlike argument than it probably deserves. It is somewhat mistold, I believe, and a little misdated, but that is of no importance. Supposing it authentic in detail, why should it make any friend of ours quiver or any foeman quake? To be sure, it goes back only to the thirteenth century, but even that seems a long way to go for such doubtful assistance. The thirteenth century is not a very present aid in time of trouble, and mediaeval kings are apt to be frail support. Nobody cares to bare his feeling for modern France and against modem Germany on the difference between any two of them. Taking mediaeval kings as they go, they do not shine to the modem view with moral radiance and when two are picked out at random one hates to have to choose between them, no matter what their breeds.

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BUT assuming that it really matters whether Philip was better than Adolphus, which of the two in the present instance seems the better? The writing of that rude letter docs not seem particularly admirable. Neither does it seem particularly French. On the contrary, to judge from merely modern experience, it seems rather a German sort of thing to do. And the more one thinks about Philip and Adolphus with a view to modern applications, the more mixed up one gets. From dim memories of the class in history I doubt if Philip is anywhere near good enough to serve as a tribute to the France of today, and I believe I know far more injurious things than the character of Adolphus of Nassau to throw at the head of a modern German. In fact, Philip's little weakness for the burning alive of Knights Templar seems to me more in the true Boche vein of our own epoch than does Adolphus's little weakness for Burgundy. I believe the more you go into it for a modern moral lesson, the more likely it is to turn out all wrong, and that therefore it is better to keep out of it altogether, especially as you know all along that your present feelings would not be altered, whatever the truth of the matter might be. Blacken Philip, and you feel just as loyal to France; whitewash Adolphus, and you think just as meanly of the German government. Turn it around the other way, and the result remains the same. There is only one difference between them that counts at all in our contest today: Both being mediaeval kings, and therefore, to modern notions, probably scoundrels, Philip, if he came to life, would be hanged by his fellow-countrymen, whereas Adolphus, if he should reappear, would now very probably be Dr. Zimmerman's successor as German Minister for Foreign Affairs.

THIS, then, is the real objection to the voluminous body of writing of which the above instance is wholly typical: if the opposite to what the writer says could be proven, it would not diminish our warlike ardor in the least. It leaves us precisely where it found us, save that we have been made to feel a little foolish in the house of our friends. It is all too fragmentary and far-away and mild; in this day we need more violent measures. Some day, if we give him time, the heavy-armed historian will no doubt demolish the early German. None of us would wish to see any German, however early, escape him; but it seems too bad at the present moment that all these rather lightarmed writers should go back and attack the very earliest of them when so many later ones appear to be getting away.