The pastors of the Prussian State Church are in one important respect the exact opposite of Martin Luther.  He was thoroughly independent in spirit and rebelled against authority; they are abjectly submissive to it.  As with the professor, so with the pastor, it is no mere accident that he is a puppet-tool of the State.  The German Government leaves nothing to chance, and realising to the fullest the importance of docile and unified subjects both for interior rule and exterior conquest, it deliberately and artfully regulates those who create public opinion.

There are some Lutheran pastors in Germany who work for an ideal, who detest the propagation of hate.  Why, one may naturally ask, do they not cry out against such a pernicious practice?  They cannot, for they are muzzled.  When a pastor enters this Church of which the Supreme War Lord is the head, his first oath is unqualified allegiance to his King and State.  If he keeps his oath he can preach no reform, for the State, being a perfect institution, can have no flaw.  If he breaks his oath, which happens when he raises his voice in the slightest criticism, he is silenced.  This means that he must seek other means of earning a livelihood—­a thing almost impossible in a land where training casts a man in a rigid mould.  Thus these parsons have their choice between going on quietly with their work and being nonentities in the public eye or bespattering the non-Germanic section of the world with the mire of hate.  I regret to say that most of them choose the latter course.

While I was in Germany I read a lengthy and solicitous letter from Pastor Winter, of Bruch, addressed to Admiral von Tirpitz, who had just retired for the ostensible reason that he was unwell, but whose illness was patently only diplomatic.  The good pastor expressed the hope that his early recovery would permit the admiral to continue his noble work of obliterating England.  Pastor Falk, of Berlin, is a typical fire-eater.  His Whitsuntide address was an attack upon Anglo-Saxon civilisation and the urgent German mission of smashing Britain and America.  The Easter sermons of hate, one of which I heard at Stettin, were especially bloodthirsty.  Congregations are larger than usual on that day, which is intended to commemorate a spirit quite the opposite to hate.  The clergy are instructed not to attack Prance or Russia, and so it comes about that, as I have previously pointed out, in Prussia, Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, Brandenburg, and Saxony, the pastors of the State Church preach hatred of Britain, as violently in their pulpits as in their pastoral visits.

The pulpit orators, taking their tip from the Government, are also exhorting their congregations to “hold out and win the war.”  I know of one pastor in a good section of Berlin, however, who has recently lost considerable influence in his congregation.  Sunday after Sunday his text has been, “Wir mussen durchhalten!” (We must hold out!) “No sacrifice should be too great for the Fatherland, no privation, too arduous to be endured if one but has the spirit to conquer.”  He paid particular attention to the rapidly increasing number of people who grumble incessantly over the shortage of food.  The good man was clearly losing patience with those who complained.