THE DUBUQUE TELEGRAPH-HERALD

Dubuque, Iowa, U.S.A.

26 January 1915

(page 4)

GERMAN VIEW OF WAR.

By Aleister Crowley, a Famous English Poet.

“Oh wad some power the giftie gie us

To see ourselves as Ithers see us!”

—Burns.

We are in for one of our periodical orgies of Cant. Right (and God, of course,) struggles gallantly in its tiny way against Armed Might, Tyranny, Barbarism; the allies pit their puny forces against the hordes of Huns. Parsons preach on David and Goliath, publicists invoke Jack the Giant-Killer. The odds are always ten to one.

In point of fact, gallant little Germany is against a world in arms. Austria has been torn for many years by internal divisions; only a part of her population is of German stock. But against Germany and this one friend are arrayed Russia, France, England, Servia, Montenegro and Japan; and every one of these nations is throwing its whole diplomatic weight into the task of getting Roumania, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Holland, Denmark and the United States to join in. We are only about 6 to 1 at present, and feel insecure.

My own view is simpler. We have waited for a long while to smash Germany and steal her goods. We have taken a first class opportunity.

We thank God that we are not as other men. There are no stained glass windows bright enough for us. Our haloes are top heavy.

We have quite forgotten that the Belgian, we have branded as the most cruel, mean, and cowardly cur in Europe, that we have demonstrated till all was blue against him as assassin, torturer, mutilator, and cannibal. We have dined in our thousands to acclaim his disgrace. We heard of nothing but “Red Rubber;” of niggers with hands, and feet off-chopped; of rape, robbery, murder, and so on. King Cleopolde, who was really a foolish kindly old gentleman, was compared to all the Roman emperors from Caligula and Nero to Justinian and Diocletian. And now it is Gallant Little Belgium, and Les Braves Belges, and enough about heroes and martyrs to make any decent man sick.

England has spent about nine centuries in hating and despising France. In crying out on her for atheism and immorality and all the rest of it; Edward the Seventh, one night upon Montmare, shwears the Frenhsch are jolly good shportsh, bigod, and lo! the Entente Cordiale.

For Russia, we have had nothing but whole-hearted abuse since 1850.

We have received and feted the would-be assassins of their Tsar; we have imagined Red Sunday in St. Petersburg, and fulminated against pogroms, and preached against vodka and brutal Cossacks till anyone who has ever been to Russia want to go away quietly and die; and the next thing is that we hold up our railways and smuggle 150,000 of the brutal Cossacks aforesaid to fling them on the flank of the German armies in Normandy and Picardy. Well no! it was only a secret service lie. But how dearly we all wished it true!

Have we not wept and yelled over Poland? And has not the Tsar promised autonomy to Poland once and again, and tricked.

It is a little sudden for our nonconformists who have denounced Russia as a tyrant for the last sixty years, to hail her now as the Champion of European Liberty.