Kelly Millers History of the World War for Human Rights | Page 2

duty are forgotten in the desire for self-advancement, conflict results.
Since the days of Athens and Sparta the world's greatest wars have in

the main been conflicts of ideals--democracy being arrayed against
oligarchy--men fighting for individual rights as against militarism and
military domination.
In the World War, which terminated with the signing of the armistice,
November 11, 1918, which painted the green fields of France and
Belgium red with blood, and swept nations into the most significant
and bitter struggle in all history, the fight was against the Imperial
Government of Germany, by men and nations who claim that humanity
the world over has rights that must be observed.
Germany has brought upon herself the destruction of her government
by ruthlessly trampling upon her neighbors and assuming that "might is
right."
The Imperial Government, led by the House of Hohenzollern, was
suffering from an exaggerated ego. Her trouble was psychological. The
men who study the strange workings and twists of the human mind
which land some men in the institutions for the criminal insane, agree
that when any man becomes obsessed with an idea and "rides a hobby"
to the exclusion of all else, he loses his balance and develops an
obliquity of view which makes him a dangerous creature.
Germany was obsessed with the spirit of militarism and almost
everything else had been sacrificed to this idol. The very first
appearance of Germans in history is as a warlike people. The earliest
German literature is of folk-tales about war heroes, and these stories
tell of the manly virtues of the heroes.
It is true that there are many scientists, poets, and musicians among the
Germans, but their warlike side must never be forgotten. The entire
race is imbued with the military spirit, the influence reaching to every
phase of national life. All that was best in the nation was raised to its
highest efficiency through military training, but in the accomplishment
of its purposes the House of Hohenzollern, which is responsible for the
development of the national fighting arm, neglected much and
produced millions of creatures who are but human machines, taught to
obey orders without consideration as to the effect their acts might

produce, whether right or wrong.
In their criticisms of the Prussian militarism the world democracies
defined militarism as an arrogant, or exclusive, professional military
spirit, developed by training and environment until it became despotic,
and assumed superiority over rational motives and deliberations.
This attitude was reflected in the conduct of the Kaiser, who, as
illustrative of the point, is quoted at the dedication of the monument to
Prince Frederick Charles at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder in 1891, as having
said, "We would rather sacrifice our eighteen army corps and our
forty-two millions inhabitants on the field of battle than surrender a
single stone of what my father and Prince Charles Frederick gained."
His speeches were filled with similar bombastic and extravagant
expressions which were the subject of international comment for many
years. Other countries besides Germany have maintained great armies,
but their maintenance has been but an incidental part of the general
business of the nation and there was no submerging of the spirit which
seeks and demands appropriate public ideals in government and action.
So that while other elements have always tended to produce friction
between neighboring countries, it was adamant, stubborn, military
Prussianism which asserted itself in the middle of 1914 and set the
world afire.
Enough is known at this writing to show that the cost in lives, money,
morals and weakening of humanity as a whole, is staggering, and yet
the whole truth can not be realized for years to come. In our own great
struggle, which had for its object the liberation of the Negro, the scars
which our country received have not yet been entirely eliminated.
Portions of the country devastated by the soldiers still bear the marks of
the invasion, but what was lost in money and material things was made
up by the welding together of the two sections of the country. The
Union was made a concrete, humanitarian body of citizens. The battle
was for the right and liberty triumphed. And by the defeat of Germany
liberty again triumphs and the world is made a safe place in which to
live.

And just as America fought for liberty in the stirring days of 1776, and
her peoples fought one another in the trying days of 1861-65, so
America was drawn into the World's War that the principles of liberty,
for which she has ever stood, might be perpetuated throughout the
world, and that an international peace might be established, which has
for its purposes the ending of such convulsions as have shaken the
world since August, 1914, since the first shots were fired in fair
Belgium by German invaders.

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