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ON THE WAY TO THE FRONT ii
really is, and I wanted to gain the personal experience which
would enable me to describe to others the dark as well as the
bright sides of war. Its dark sides are the hate, the desire for
vengeance, the destruction, the gutted homesteads, the ruined
crops, the wounded, the maimed, the graves, the grief and
privation, but war is bright when it is fought by a united
nation, determined to live and to retain its independence.
The unity, self-sacrifice and confidence in victory of the
German nation is one of the bright sides of this war, which
otherwise reveals an abyss of human misery. I thought it
would be instructive to see for myself how far civilisation,
Christianity and pacificism had advanced nineteen hundred
and fourteen years after the birth of Christ.
During the first phase of the war the British press accused
the Germans of barbaric cruelty to their prisoners and to
wounded opponents. Not for one moment did I believe these
reports, but for the sake of the Teutonic race I wanted to
uproot this calumny and to bring to light the truth. If one
cannot ask anything else of a people which stands on the
pinnacle of culture, one may at least expect it not to accuse its
opponents of crimes which were never committed. German
protests against the accusations of foreign newspapers were
of course of no avail. Perhaps I shall be believed if I protest
before God that I will not write a single line which is not true
and will describe nothing but what I have seen with my own
eyes.
Finally, it was my wish to study the psychology of war,
I mean the Geist and the fighting spirit with which armies
went into battle, the mood in which they returned therefrom,
the thoughts and feeHngs of the wounded, the spirit with which
the soldiers entered the fray for the second time after having
been slightly wounded, tended and healed. In the last phase
of the Manchurian campaign there was a noticeable weakening
of purpose which led to slackened efforts on both sides and
caused the war to die, so to speak, of inanition. Was a
like form of mental fatigue, an exhaustion of soul and body
under the stupendous hardships in the field to leave its mark
on the Germans too ? Or would their conviction, that the
war meant to them the life or death of Germany, endow them
with a buoyancy and tenacity enabling them to fight through
to victory ? It might be of interest to us. Teutons of the
north, to gain some insight into this problem. Such knowledge
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