PROFESSOR KUNO FRANCKE WRITES OF REAL GERMANY

Professor Kuno Francke LL.D. '12 has written a comprehensive and illuminating article on "The True Germany," of which the following is an extract:

Much of the criticism of Germany in English and American war literature of the past few months is written in such a vein as to leave the impression that the Germany of today is not the real Germany, that it is a perversion of its former self, and that the delivery of the German people from this perverted state and the restoration of the German mind to its earlier and truer type is a demand of humanity, and the real issue of the present war. I have no doubt that most of the persons who hold this view hold it in all seriousness and candor. It therefore seems to me eminently worth while to discuss it with equal seriousness and candor, to examine the foundations on which it rests, to sift what is true and authentic in it from what is specious and sophisticated, and thus to find out what the real relation is between contemporary Germany and the Germany of a hundred years ago; to determine, in brief, to what extent the contemporary German type has preserved and embodies what by the opponents of Imperial Germany is called the true German type.

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It is a trite saying that the Prussian state is a living embodiment and a concrete application, upon a large scale, of Kantian principles of duty. Trite as this saying is, it may not be superfluous to analyze its meaning somewhat more closely. There can be no doubt that it is historically correct in so far as the founders of modern Prussia were, directly or indirectly, disciples of the Kantian philosophy. Not that Kant's views on politics and public affairs did in any specific manner shape Prussian legislation of the early nineteenth century; his views were too individualistic and too little concerned with national needs for that. Not Kant but the men who followed him--Stein, Hardenberg, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Fichte, and Hegel--have been official exponents, so to speak, of the mission of Prussia for a regenerated Germany. But it is nevertheless true that the spirit of the whole work of legislative reform which brought about the reconstruction of Prussia after the battle of Jena would not have been what it was but for the influence of Kant's thought. 'Thou canst, for thou shalt'--these words in which Kant epigramatically summed up his view of life were indeed the fundamental creed of all those noble men who, in the years following the Prussian debacle, tried, as Frederick William III said, to help the state 'to replace by spiritual agencies what it had lost in physical resources.'

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It should, however, be said that these excesses of German vitality, so skilfully used by anti-German writers to discredit Germany's position in the present conflict, have not, as is asserted, been a serious danger to the rest of the world. Rather have they been an element of weakness to Germany herself. They are not essentially different from the spirit of haughty masterfulness that characterized English foreign policies and English insular self-sufficiency throughout the larger part of the nineteenth century; or from the French belief in the superiority of France in all matters of higher civilization; or even from the American assumption that the United States is the foremost standard-bearer of international justice and righteousness. They are an impressive instance of that tragic national self-overestimation which seems to be inseparable from periods of striking national ascendency, both quickening and endangering this ascendency itself.

Let us hope that this tragic situation--the catastrophe of greatness, induced, partly, at least through the faults of its virtues--will have a solution worthy of the noble ideals that sustained Germany's upward flight. Let us hope that it will lead to the purging, purifying, and strengthening of German greatness through this fearful trial. A letter received recently from a German judge, now fighting as lieutenant on the Russian frontier, points to such a hope. He writes: 'The conduct of our men in this war is beyond all praise. Whatever may be the outcome of the war, the German people is bound to gain by it in inner strength. All classes have come to know what they are to each other, and we confidently trust that they will never forget it. The party strife thus far waged with venom and hatred will give way to a generous and objective discussion of honestly conflicting opinions, and the ideal of constructive social work will be more fully grasped and more devotedly pursued than ever before. To us in the field, that will be the best reward.

Whether these hopes of the future are ever fulfilled in their totality or not, our survey of the past and the present of Germany has, I trust, made it clear that the German people of today is not, as its enemies declare, a degenerate perversion of a former and nobler type. On the contrary, with all its defects and excrescences of temper, it is a splendid outgrowth of a century's training in the national application of those ideals which distinguished the classic period of German literature and philosophy: unconditional submission to duty, unremitting endeavor for intellectual advance, assiduous cultivation of the things that give joy to the soul. A people that believes in these ideals cannot be lost.