PERHAPS it was scarcely necessary for the Oxford Divinity
Professors, with whom are associated other well-known Oxford
scholars, to draw up a reply to the German "Address to Evangelical
Christians". . . Point by point it shows the professors of German
Kultur to be in the wrong. It is not true, at least in the
spirit, the signatories say at the outset, to affirm that the
German people has maintained peace during the last 43 years. Within
the half-century Germany or Prussia has waged three successive
wars, adding after each new lands by conquest to their territory.
Germany, moreover, has more than once been on the verge of
provoking a war. "The sword has been rattled in the scabbard, and
antagonists have been dared to move a step in answer." Any proposal
for diminution of armaments has been indignantly scouted by the
German authorities. Since the Franco-German war the German
Professoriate has undergone a significant change, and has become,
for the most part, imperialistic in tone - Treitschke's ideals
appear to rule the educated Germany of to-day. It will not do for
the signatories to the German address to taunt us with allying to
ourselves "Asiatic barbarism", for, as a matter of fact, Russian
intellectual and social development seems to be advancing, while
that of Germany shows atavistic tendencies; and, if we are aided by
Japan, what is to be said of the German efforts for an alliance
with Turkey? In conclusion, the Oxford scholars, citing the case of
Louvain, charge German Kultur with a ghoulish taste for
destroying things that are sacred, artistically beautiful or
historically valuable, and anticipate, in the event - which God
forbid! - of the invasion of England by the German armies, the same
fate for the Bodleian as that which has befallen the library of
Louvain.
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