War Letters from the Living Dead Man by Elsa Barker Page B

those very forces which now by their suffering they were severing in the region where—from the very limitation of satisfactions—elementary desires are more easily starved out than on the earth.
    There was in one of the armies a very cruel officer who was hated by his men. He came out here and many of the men came out here, and I made no attempt to protect him from their reproaches, because he needed to learn that injustice deserves reproach. On earth their mouths had been stopped by army discipline, but out here he had to realize how much he had wronged them. He could never have realized it in any other way. Had I preached to him he would have told me to mind my own business. The law of justice does not preach. It demonstrates. He had to endure the demonstration of his own injustice through the dark and reproachful shadows by which he was long surrounded. And I may say in passing that he is still surrounded by them. I have made no effort to help him. Perhaps I could have done so; but such determined opposition on my part to the law of justice might have let him go forward into his own selfish heaven with such a load of injustice on his soul that in his next earthly life he would have been crushed by it. The resentment of these men was very deep, and while I might have softened it for their sake—not his—I let it work itself out.
    Had there been no one else needing my help and deserving it more, I might have spent a long time with these men and yet made little impression. I did exactly as I should have done on earth had such a case come before me, and I believe that I did it right. Whenever I see a soul afflicted by the unjust judgments of others I seek to set the balance true, as I should have done on earth; but I am not here to upset the law of cause and effect. When I can help, I help; but I am more useful in preventing the setting up of evil causes than I could ever be in deflecting the legitimate course of effects. When I urge men to help the Masters in holding back the awful karma of Germany, I am not talking sentimentally. I am talking as a just judge. The German people have been deceived by their leaders and have followed blindly a course they have not understood. Collectively they are responsible to the other races, but individually they are not responsible in the same degree; for they have been themselves deceived, and they do not know that their cause of national aggression is unjust and of satanic origin.
    It is the hope of those Teachers who can watch from the outside and above, that the docile German people should not be forever hated by the world because the arrogant war party has hurled them at their neighbors. I am not condoning the unlovely traits in the German character, or in the character of any other people; but of all the races engaged in this gigantic struggle, the German race knows least about the causes that hurled it forward. A spoon-fed press and the penalties of lèse majesté have kept them from knowing anything which could have made them less flexible instruments in the hands of their leaders. The karma of those whose headstrong and arrogant policy precipitated this war is an individual karma, and it will have to be worked out by individual suffering and so-called punishment; but the karma of the great mass of the German people is a race karma. They have let themselves be led on to their own defeat. Think how the very law of reaction will throw the light of popular and democratic investigation into the darkest nooks and crannies of the German nation and government after this war. Those who have been deceived to their hurt will demand to be deceived no more. In twenty years the life of the German government will be as open as that of the United States. The so-called “muckraker” will arise with a lantern on his hat.
    Also by the law of reaction England will be shaken out of her sluggishness that has filled her shops with the wares of other countries because she was too slack to make her