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Germans had imbibed from 1870 the lesson that arms and war were the sole source of German greatness.
he inspired “distrust at first sight.”
Bethmann, behind his distinguished façade of great height, somber eyes, and well-trimmed imperial, was a man, as Theodore Roosevelt said of Taft, “who means well feebly.”
The active army had had no practice in entrenching and hardly any tools to dig with. Transport was lacking as were tents and field kitchens; cooking utensils had to be collected from farms and villages; telephone equipment was negligible. The army marched in a chaos of improvisation.
They sang “Deutschland über Alles,” “Die Wacht am Rhein,” and “Heil dir im Siegeskranz.” They sang when they halted, when they billeted, when they caroused. Many who lived through the next thirty days of mounting combat, agony, and terror were to remember the sound of endless, repetitious masculine singing as the worst torment of the invasion.
“For all acts of hostility the following principles will be applied: all punishments will be executed without mercy, the whole community will be regarded as responsible, hostages will be taken in large numbers.” This practice of the principle of collective responsibility, having been expressly outlawed by the Hague Convention, shocked the world of 1914 which had believed in human progress.
The Times of London had said Namur would withstand a siege of six months; it had fallen in four days.
Nationhood, like a wild gust of wind, arose and swept them aside.
the welcoming attitude toward war owed something to the “unconscious boredom of peace.”
They succeeded in overlooking the violation created by their presence in Belgium in favor of the violation committed, as they saw it, by Belgians resisting their presence.
The medieval city on the road from Liège to Brussels was renowned for its University and incomparable Library, founded in 1426 when Berlin was a clump of wooden huts.
“These people are envious, unbalanced and ill-tempered. They burned the Library of Louvain simply because it was unique and universally admired”—in other words, a barbarian’s gesture of anger against civilized things.
The deeper both belligerents sank into war and the more lives and treasure they spent, the more determined they became to emerge with some compensating gain.
