| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/rightaboverace00kahn |
"We will not permit the blood in our veins to drown the conscience in our breast. Wewill heed the call of honour beyond the call of race."
This is one of the best books that hasappeared about the war. It shows conclusivelywhy the United States must put thiswar through to a finish, and why every goodAmerican and every believer in liberty andcivilization must be heart and soul againstGermany. The fact that Mr. Kahn himselfis of German origin emphasizes the contentionwhich every good American shouldmake, namely, that the Americans who arein whole or in part of German blood shouldeagerly take the front places in this war forAmericanism against the attempt of thePrussianized Germany of the Hohenzollernsto establish a world tyranny.
Not only is the book an admirable pleafor Americanism and for putting the warthrough, but it is also a no less admirableplea for treating our internal affairs on thebasis of common sense and high idealism.I should like to see the book circulatedthroughout the United States as a tract onSound Americanism. The last two chapters,on "Frenzied Liberty" and "The[Pg vi]Myth of a 'Rich Man's War,'" should becalled to the especial attention of the personswho, not daring to be openly treasonable,try to serve Germany by advancing the causeof Bolshevism in this country, and by downrightand shameless perversion of the truthas to the part played by the men of meansin this war. The chapter on "FrenziedLiberty" is an acute and fearless expositionof the damage done to liberty by the menhere who are trying to play the part of theRussian Bolshevists, by upsetting order andcivilization in this country. One of themost remarkable, and also one of the mostsinister, of Germany's extraordinary successeshas been the way she has used theforces of disorder in other countries toparalyze the cause of liberty. She herself isthe embodiment of order imposed by an ironmilitaristic autocracy from above on thepeople beneath. She is the embodiment ofthat species of order which is the antithesisof liberty. She personifies it now exactly asthe Russian Czars did in the middle of thelast century, only with infinitely greaterefficiency. But her feeling even for order isconditioned by her unyielding determinationthat the Germans shall lord over and shallexploit the rest of the world.
In itself this feeling of intense nationalismis a fine thing, and we would admire it if...