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    Speaking of Prussians
    Speaking of Prussians
    Speaking of Prussians
    Ebook82 pages54 minutes

    Speaking of Prussians

    By Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    Speaking of Prussians

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      Book preview

      Speaking of Prussians - Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Speaking of Prussians, by Irvin S. Cobb

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: Speaking of Prussians

      Author: Irvin S. Cobb

      Release Date: November 2, 2012 [EBook #41272]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPEAKING OF PRUSSIANS ***

      Produced by Greg Bergquist, Paul Clark and the Online

      Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This

      file was produced from images generously made available

      by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

      Transcriber's Note:

      Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible.

      Reverend Herr Doktor Konsistorialat D. Vorwerk has been changed to

      Reverend Herr Doktor Konsistorialrat D. Vorwerk

      Speaking of Prussians—

      BY IRVIN S. COBB

      FICTION

      Those Times and These

      Local Color

      Old Judge Priest

      Fibble, D. D.

      Back Home

      The Escape of Mr. Trimm

      WIT AND HUMOR

      Speaking of Operations——

      Europe Revised

      Roughing It de Luxe

      Cobb's Bill of Fare

      Cobb's Anatomy

      MISCELLANY

      Speaking of Prussians——

      Paths of Glory

      GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY NEW YORK

      TURNING THE EAGLE LOOSE

      "Speaking of

      Prussians——"

      By

      Irvin S. Cobb

      Author of

      Back Home, Europe Revised,

      Speaking of Operations——, Etc.

      New York

      George H. Doran Company

      COPYRIGHT, 1917,

      BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

      COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

      PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

      DEDICATED

      BY PERMISSION

      TO

      WOODROW WILSON

      PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

      "Speaking of Prussians—"

      I

      I believe it to be my patriotic duty as an American citizen to write what I am writing, and after it is written to endeavour to give to it as wide a circulation in the United States as it is possible to find. In making this statement, though, I am not setting myself up as a teacher or a preacher; neither am I going upon the assumption that, because I am a fairly frequent contributor to American magazines, people will be the readier or should be the readier to read what I have to say.

      Aside from a natural desire to do my own little bit, my chief reason is this: Largely by chance and by accident, I happened to be one of four or five American newspaper men who witnessed at first hand the German invasion of Belgium and one of three who, a little later, witnessed some of the results of the Germanic subjugation of the northern part of France. I was inside Germany at the time the rush upon Paris was checked and the retreat from the Marne took place, thereby having opportunity to take cognisance of the feelings and sentiments and the impulses which controlled the German populace in a period of victory and in a period of reversals.

      I am in the advantageous position, therefore, of being able to recount as an eyewitness—and, as I hope, an honest one—something of what war means in its effects upon the civilian populace of a country caught unawares and in a measure unprepared; and, more than that, what war particularly and especially means when it is waged under the direction of officers trained in the Prussian school.

      Having seen these things, I hate war with all my heart. I am sure that I hate it with a hatred deeper than the hate of you, reader, who never saw its actual workings and its garnered fruitage. For, you see, I saw the physical side of it; and, having seen it, I want to tell you that I have no words with which halfway adequately to describe it for you, so that you may have in your mind the pictures I have in mine. It is the most obscene, the most hideous, the most brutal, the most malignant—and sometimes the most necessary—spectacle, I veritably believe, that ever the eye of mortal man has rested on since the world began, and I do hate it.

      But if war had to come—war for the preservation of our national honour and our national integrity; war for the defence of our flag and our people and our soil; war for the preservation of the principles of representative government among the nations of the earth—I would rather that it came now than that it came later. I have a child. I would rather that child, in her maturity, might be assured of living in

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