This position, he said, was that America and all the world must
hope for German defeat, and must see that Germany was in the wrong.
"I was for Germany five months ago," said Dr. Hillis. "I have been
lecturing for five years about the lessons we might learn from Germany.
Five months ago, it may be remembered, I gave an interview, in which I
praised Germany and in which I took the part of the German people in the
dreadful war that had come.
"But I have changed my mind. I have seen that I was mistaken. Several
months ago I gave instructions to my lecture bureau to withdraw my
lecture, 'The New Germany,' from my list. That was about the middle of
September, and it was only then that I realized what a German success
would mean to the world--how there could be nothing else but a world of
armed camps, how we in this country, too, would have to adopt militarism
in order to live.
"Just prior to that time, in the first of my Sunday evening sermons in
this course, I had praised the Kaiser. I believed in the German ideals,
I believed in German progress, German inventions, German principles. But
I was wrong. I have now become convinced of what I never imagined
before--that in the German viewpoint the only sin against the Holy Ghost
is military impotency, and, to use Treitschke's words again, the only
virtue is militarism.
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