Speaking of Prussians by Irvin S. Cobb

It never seemed to occur to him that Belgians or Frenchmen or Dutchmen might personally prefer to keep on being Belgians or Frenchmen or Dutchmen, and might have some rights in the matter; indeed might prefer to die rather than live under a system intolerable to human beings reared outside the scope of Prussian influence. So far as I might judge, this never occurred to any of the less eloquent but equally ardent defenders of this peculiar brand of _Kultur_ with whom I talked during that fall in the Rhineland country.

We must have been blind then, my companion and I -- yes, and deaf too; for we diagnosed this bigotry as evidences of an egomania, probably confined to a few hundreds or a few thousands among the German-speaking peoples. In the light of what has happened since we all know that the disease affected a whole nation, and was a disease of which, as yet, the frequent upsettings of their original programme and the absolute certainty that the programme itself can never be carried out until Europe and America both are graveyards have not to any very noticeable extent served to operate as a cure.