Right Above Race

Excerpt

This is one of the best books that has appeared about the war. It shows conclusively why the United States must put this war through to a finish, and why every good American and every believer in liberty and civilization must be heart and soul against Germany. The fact that Mr. Kahn himself is of German origin emphasizes the contention which every good American should make, namely, that the Americans who are in whole or in part of German blood should eagerly take the front places in this war for Americanism against the attempt of the Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns to establish a world tyranny.

Not only is the book an admirable plea for Americanism and for putting the war through, but it is also a no less admirable plea for treating our internal affairs on the basis of common sense and high idealism. I should like to see the book circulated throughout the United States as a tract on Sound Americanism. The last two chapters, on "Frenzied Liberty" and "The Myth of a 'Rich Man's War,'" should be called to the especial attention of the persons who, not daring to be openly treasonable, try to serve Germany by advancing the cause of Bolshevism in this country, and by downright and shameless perversion of the truth as to the part played by the men of means in this war. The chapter on "Frenzied Liberty" is an acute and fearless exposition of the damage done to liberty by the men here who are trying to play the part of the Russian Bolshevists, by upsetting order and civilization in this country. One of the most remarkable, and also one of the most sinister, of Germany's extraordinary successes has been the way she has used the forces of disorder in other countries to paralyze the cause of liberty. She herself is the embodiment of order imposed by an iron militaristic autocracy from above on the people beneath. She is the embodiment of that species of order which is the antithesis of liberty. She personifies it now exactly as the Russian Czars did in the middle of the last century, only with infinitely greater efficiency. But her feeling even for order is conditioned by her unyielding determination that the Germans shall lord over and shall exploit the rest of the world.

In itself this feeling of intense nationalism is a fine thing, and we would admire it if it had not been perverted into an assault on all the rest of mankind, and especially on liberty-loving civilized mankind. There is in Germany an immense sense of solidarity, which makes the German Socialist, the German middle-class capitalist, and the German junker work side by side with enthusiasm for the subjugation and exploitation of all the Allied countries. The Socialists have cynically announced that their job is to encourage pacifism in other countries, and thereby to lessen the resistance of these countries to German militarism. The Socialists have worked for the conquest of other countries in the interest of German capitalism, because they feel they will get some share in the profit, and because they have been schooled, in common with the rest of their country, to a brutal cynicism concerning the wrongs and sufferings of other countries, so long as Germans profit by them. In consequence the German Government, aided by the German Socialists, has encouraged in every way the forces of disorder in every hostile country—the Socialists in France, the "independent" Labour men in England, the Bolshevists in Russia, the Sinn Feiners in Ireland, the Reds in Finland, and the most fanatical murderers of Christians in Turkey. It is for this reason that Germany tries to use the I.W.W. in the United States, and plays on the foolish American politicians who have believed that the Russian Bolshevists would be able to infect Germany with their revolt, or who have believed that they by fine words could arouse the spirit of German revolt and separate the German people from the German Government—a thing which can only be done by the breakdown of Germany's military strength.

Germany has no fears as to her own ability to suppress disorder....