was accused of being 'pro-German' and a spy, with consequences natural to such accusations. Every one tried to out-bawl his neighbor with declarations of loyalty, often of a spurious character.
The trance became deepened, the subconscious emotions of fear, anger, and aggression became more and more intensified, fanned as they were by the hot breath of propaganda and the bellows of the press, until the mass of the nation fairly quivered with the fever heat of enthusiasm and maniacal excitement, an overwhelming mass excitement which no individual could withstand. "Make the world safe for Democracy," "He who does not stand behind Me is disloyal and unworthy of Me" were slogans impressed on the subconscious mind of the public with all the suggestive force of law, press, bema, rostrum, pulpit, and movie, all waving on high old glory, calling crusaders to the battlefield of Democracy in honor of "Courage, Cooties, and Heroes," and for the glory of "the blood-red cross of War." Secretary Lansing has well summed up the general mental state in his appeal: "Let us, as loyal citizens of the Republic, serve in this mighty crusade against Prussianism." For such a mental state can only be paralleled by the crusade mania of the Middle Ages, the mania which cost Europe millions of men, killed and crippled, devastations of populations and countries, followed by the no less terrible epidemic of the Black Plague which ravaged Europe and Asia from end to end, with the destruction of half the human race.
The bestialization produced by war and militant patriotism came openly to the front with all the horrors of savagery, rapine, deportation, atrocities, and the inhuman slaughter of millions of human beings for the glory of the Fatherland and Kultur and for "the making of the world fit for Democracy." Groups of scientists vied with each other in their supply of infernal machines and chemical poisons for the wholesale slaughter of mankind. Poisons and poison-gases, more deadly than ever employed by savage man, poisons which even savages and barbarians scorned to use, were utilized triumphantly and jubilantly by Kultur and culture in their mad strife for supremacy. Man could not have fallen to a lower level of vice and depravity. The Aristotelian dictum was well justified in this strife of nations, in this ignoble world war: "A vicious man can do ten thousand times as much harm as a beast." The chivalrous motto of Alexander of Macedon "οὐ κλέπτω τὴν νίκην," was scorned by the generals of civilized nations. Atrocities of the most vicious kind were justified by the watchwords: "This is war!" "Might is Right." "Necessity knows
