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THE LAST HOHENZOLLERN
Behind him stands the embodiment of all that Prussian kultur and
efficiency mean, wooden uninventiveness, clockwork accuracy of
movement--without soul or inspiration. He himself is thin and
scraggy--Raemaekers has intensified these characteristics, but even so
the caricature of the reality is more accurate than unkind. Many months
ago, this vacuous heir of the house of Hohenzollern set to work on the
task of overcoming France, and the result ... may be found in bundles of
four, going back to the incinerators beyond Aix, in the piled corpses
before the French positions at and about Verdun; some of the results,
the swag of the decadent burglar, went back in sacks from the chateaux
that this despicable thing polluted and robbed as might any Sikes from
Portland or Pentonville.
He is the embodiment, himself, of the last phase of Prussian kultur.
Somewhere back in the history of Prussia its rulers had to invent and to
create, and then kultur brought forth hard men; later, it became
possible to copy, and then kultur brought forth mechanical perfection
rather than creative perfection, systematized its theories of life and
work, and brought into being a class of men just a little meaner, more
rigid, more automaton-like, than the original class; having reduced life
to one system, and that without soul or ideal, kultur brought forth
types lacking more and more in originality.
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