Speaking of Prussians by Irvin S. Cobb

Even more illuminating were his views with regard to the position of Germany in Europe before the war began. He admitted that for years, by the neighbour-peoples, Germany had been feared and distrusted. This, he insisted, was not Germany's fault, but a fear and a distrust born of envy and malice among deteriorated and decaying nations for a land which, so far as Europe, at least, was concerned, was the mother of all the virtues and all the great benevolent impulses of the century. He denied that Germany had ever been overbearing or threatening; denied that anything except jealousy could lie at the back of the general suspicion directed against Prussia, not only by aliens but -- before the war began -- by Bavaria and by Saxony as well.

"Germany," he said to me one day, "has earned the right to rule this Hemisphere; and Germany is going to rule it! When we have conquered our enemies, as conquer them we shall -- when we have implanted among them our own German culture, our own German institutions and our own German form of government, which surely we also shall do -- they will, in succeeding generations, be the better and the happier for it. They will come to know, then, that the guns of our fleets and the rifles of our soldiers brought them blessings in disguise. Out of their present sufferings and their future humiliations will spring up the benefits of German civilisation.