Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 75:299 (Jul 1918)
Article: Pan-Germanism: Its Methods And Its Fruits
Author: Charles William Super

BSac 75:299 (July 1918) p. 384

Pan-Germanism: Its Methods And Its Fruits

Charles W. Super

The cataclysmic war that broke out in Europe in 1914 will furnish all future historians of civilization with phases of group-psychology wholly new. Moreover, they will have at their command a wealth of material far greater than all their predecessors. For one thing, we see at the head of the central alliance a people who in the past made notable contributions to the arts and sciences, to literature and philosophy, and especially to music, joining hands with another people who never contributed anything whatever to the progress of the world, whose slow march across the world’s stage has been marked with destruction only. For another, we see a people who have developed an educational system that has been admired and copied by other countries for several decades, and by means of which it has brought its entire population to the highest pitch of collective efficiency, but whose moral standard has not advanced beyond what it was three, perhaps thirteen, centuries ago. We have here a demonstration that a state system of education may become a curse quite as much as a blessing to mankind. Ever since the foundation of our Republic it has been proclaimed from pulpit and platform, in books and periodicals without number, that its perpetuity depends upon popular education. It has been assumed, because regarded as needing no proof, that

BSac 75:299 (July 1918) p. 385

an educated people is also an enlightened people, a humane people, a moral people.

German education has demonstrated that an educated people may be a docile people, a people who do not think for themselves, but blindly accept as true and right what a small class among them stamps with its approval. In this country we educate the future citizen to think for himself, because we believe he will thiqk rightly on most problems, if not on all, that may be placed before him. Germany educates her future citizens solely for the purpose of inducing them to think as little as possible except within prescribed limits, and to follow blindly a self-constituted class whom the state has appointed as leaders. The familiar dictum, “Knowledge is power,” remains unshaken; but henceforth it will occupy a very subordinate place in the discussion of educational problems. The present century has demonstrated that intellectual power is purely material force, to be classed with dynamite, with steam, or with electricity. Misguided power is a curse. Only when directed by proper motive does it become a blessing. A recent number of a New York periodical contained a cartoon representing the devil and a German professor. The latter asks how he can make more enemies, and receives the answer that there is no way, since the entire world is already his enemy. In...