A person in my position is liable to see Sherlock Holmes in the most beefwitted policeman. I did not feel that I was advancing in the confidence of the Germans. I got no secrets worth reporting to London, and I was not at all sure whether the cut of my clothes had not outweighed the eloquence of my conversation. I thought I would do something more public. I wrote a long parody on the Declaration of Independence and applied it to Ireland.
Aleister Crowley, Confessions, Chapter 76
Pax Hominibus Bonae Voluntatis by Aleister Crowley in International, Dec 1917.
“Now one cannot help saying that the Germans have shown their good faith in this matter very clearly. They are always proposing ‘peace conferences,’ thereby indicating that we are not, as some of their publicists maintain, ‘a gang of enraged millionaires bent upon destroying German liberties as American liberties have already been destroyed,’ but a set of sensible people who want to settle down and live happily ever after.” [via]
Pax Hominibus Bonae Voluntatis by Aleister Crowley in International, Dec 1917.
“Now one cannot help saying that the Germans have shown their good faith in this matter very clearly. They are always proposing ‘peace conferences,’ thereby indicating that we are not, as some of their publicists maintain, ‘a gang of enraged millionaires bent upon destroying German liberties as American liberties have already been destroyed,’ but a set of sensible people who want to settle down and live happily ever after.” [via]
Pax Hominibus Bonae Voluntatis by Aleister Crowley in International, Dec 1917.
“How is it that the sentimental stay-at-home, domestic German becomes Giant Blunderbore? It is not a miracle. It is not an outbreak of collective sadism. It is simply the feeling that he is cornered. All Germans feel this.” [via]
Pax Hominibus Bonae Voluntatis by Aleister Crowley in International, Dec 1917.
“The Germans are under the monstrous delusion that God is with them; that they are fighting for their hearths and altars. It is none of our business to cure that delusion. We must accept it in estimating their minds.” [via]
Pax Hominibus Bonae Voluntatis by Aleister Crowley in International, Dec 1917.
“The idea of resisting repression is a totally wrong one. Christ submitted willingly to what is generally admitted to be the greatest crime ever perpetrated, although, as he himself explained, he had twelve legions of angels actually mobilized, which would have made as short work of the Romans as the angels of Mons did of the Germans in the early part of the war.” [via]
We Stand Above by Aleister Crowley in International, Dec 1917.
“We are out to break the political will of another group of nations, and our worst foes are those of our own people who are giving the show away. We go to war to defend the rights of the little nations, and we imprison Irishmen who can not forget that their mothers were raped by British soldiers. We are particularly strong on Belgium, and her representative complains that there is to be no seat for Belgium on the Allied war council. The Germans go to war for Kultur, yet they cannot find an expedient for contracting out of the shelling of cathedrals. And if these things are done in the green tree of the people in power, what shall be done in the dry tree, and withered sticks of the mediocre.” [via]