THE GERMAN WAR-TRIUMVIRATE
I.--NIETZSCHE.
The English reader is now in possession of a complete translation of
Nietzsche, in the admirable edition published by T. N. Foulis, and
edited by Oscar Levy, of which the eighteenth and concluding volume
has just appeared. To the uninitiated I would recommend as an
introductory study: (1) Professor Lichtenberger's volume; (2)
Ludovici, "Nietzsche" (1s., Constable), with a suggestive preface by
Dr. Levy; (3) the very useful summary of Mr. Mügge--an excellent
number in an excellent series (Messrs. Jack's "People's Books"); (4)
Dr. Barry's chapter in the "Heralds of Revolt," giving the Catholic
point of view; (5) Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche, "The Young Nietzsche"; and
(6) an essay by the present writer, published as far back as 1897, and
which, therefore, may at least claim the distinction of having been
one of the first to draw attention in Great Britain to the great
German writer. But a searching estimate of Nietzsche in English still
remains to be written. And there is only one man that could write it,
and that man is Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton. I confidently prophesy that
a study of Nietzsche, if he has the courage to undertake it, will be
Mr. Chesterton's greatest book. He will find in the German heretic a
foe worthy of his steel.
I.
Like the history of most great thinkers, like the history of Kant and
Schopenhauer, the biography of Nietzsche is totally barren of
incident, and can be disposed of in a few lines. Born in 1844,
apparently of noble Polish extraction ("Nizky" in Polish means
humble), the son of a clergyman, and the descendant on both sides of a
long line of clergymen, the future "Anti-Christ" spent an exemplary,
studious, and strenuous youth. After serving his time in the army--he
was considered one of the best riders of his regiment--and after a
brilliant University career at Bonn and Leipzig, he was appointed, at
twenty-four years of age, Professor of Greek in the University of
Bale. His academic activity extended over eleven years, and was only
interrupted in 1870 by a few months' service in the Ambulance Corps,
during the Franco-German War.
His first book, "The Birth of Tragedy," appeared in 1871. Like most of
his books, it was published at his own expense, and, like most of his
books, it did not find a public. The three first parts of his
masterpiece, "Thus Spake Zarathustra," were such a desperate failure
that Nietzsche only ventured to print fifty copies of the fourth and
concluding part, and he printed them merely for private circulation
amongst his friends, but he only disposed of seven copies!
In 1879 he resigned, owing to ill-health, with a pension of £120.
After his retirement he spent a nomadic life wandering from Nice to
Venice, and from the Engadine to Sicily, ever in quest of health and
sunshine, racked by neuralgia and insomnia, still preaching in the
desert, still plunging deeper and deeper into solitude. And as the
world refused to listen to him, Nietzsche became more and more
convinced of the value of his message. His last book, "Ecce Homo," an
autobiography, contains all the premonitory symptoms of the
threatening tragedy. It is mainly composed of such headings as the
following: "Why I am so Wise," "Why I am so Clever," "Why I write such
Excellent Books," and "Why I am a Fatalist."
Alas! fatality was soon to shatter the wise and clever man who wrote
those excellent books. In 1889 Nietzsche went mad. For eleven years he
lingered on in private institutions and in the house of his old mother
at Naumburg. He died in 1900, when his name and fame had radiated over
the civilized world, and when the young generation in Germany was
hailing him as the herald of a new age. England, as usually happens in
the case of Continental thinkers, was the last European country to
feel his influence; but in recent years that influence has been
rapidly gaining ground, even in England, a fact abundantly proved by
the great and startling success of the complete edition of his works.
II.
Most writers on Nietzsche--and they are legion--begin with extolling
him as a prophet or abusing him as a lunatic. I submit that before we
extol or abuse, our first duty is to understand. And we can no longer
evade that duty. We cannot afford any longer to ignore or dismiss the
most powerful force in Continental literature, on the vain pretence
that the author was mad, as if the greatest French thinker of the
eighteenth century, Rousseau, and the greatest thinker of the
nineteenth century, Auguste Comte, had not fallen victims to the same
disease.
And, on the whole, Nietzsche is not difficult to understand, although
there has arisen a host of commentators to obscure his meaning,
although Nietzsche himself delights in expressing himself in the form
of cryptic and mystic aphorism, although he continuously contradicts
himself. But apart from those difficulties, his message is strikingly
simple and his personality is singularly transparent. And his message
and his personality are one. He is a convincing illustration of
Fichte's dictum, that any great system of philosophy is the outcome,
not of the intellect, but of a man's character. Nietzsche is not a
metaphysician like Hegel, whom he abhorred. He is not a
"logic-grinder," like Mill, whom he despised. He is a moralist, like
the French, whom he loved. His culture and learning were French even
more than German. He was steeped in Montaigne, to whom he has paid a
glowing tribute in "Schopenhauer as Educationalist." He was a careful
student of the great French classics of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. He read and annotated Guyau, with whom he had
many points in common. By a curious coincidence, a few years before
the advent of Nietzsche, a great French thinker had anticipated every
one of Nietzsche's doctrines, and had expressed them in one of the
most striking books of the French language. And by an even more
curious paradox, whilst every European critic devotes himself to-day
to the interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy, they systematically
ignore--as Nietzsche himself ignored--the masterpiece of the
Frenchman.
III.
Let us, then, first keep in mind that Nietzsche is not a metaphysician
or a logician, but he is pre-eminently a moralist. His one aim is to
revise our moral values and to establish new values in their place.
For Nietzsche does both. There are two poles to his thought. He is an
iconoclast, but he is also a hero-worshipper. He is a herald of
revolt, but he is also a constructive thinker. Even in his earliest
work, "Thoughts out of Season," whilst he destroys the two popular
idols of the day, the theologian and the historian, he sets up two new
heroes, Schopenhauer and Wagner.
IV.
We have said that Nietzsche's philosophy is strikingly simple. Its
whole kernel can be expressed in two words. He is a systematic pagan,
and he is an uncompromising aristocrat. As a pagan, he is a
consistent enemy of Christianity. As an aristocrat, he is a bitter
opponent of democracy. He proclaims that Anti-Christ has appeared in
his own person. He hails the advent of the Superman.
First, he is a pagan, a pagan of Greece, or, rather, a pagan of the
Renascence, and, as a pagan, he considers Christianity the real enemy.
Christianity denies life; Nietzsche asserts it. Christianity mainly
thinks of the future world; Nietzsche has his feet firmly planted on
Mother Earth. Christianity glorifies meekness and humility; Nietzsche
glorifies pride and self-assertion. Christianity defends the poor and
the weak; Nietzsche contends that the strong alone have a right to
live. Christianity blesses the peacemakers; Nietzsche extols the
warriors. Christianity is the religion of human suffering; Nietzsche
is a worshipper of life, and proclaims the joyful science, _die
fröhliche Wissenschaft_, the _gaya scienza_.
It is impossible within the limits of a short article to discuss
Nietzsche's view of Christianity. We are concerned here not with
discussion, but with exposition. At an early opportunity we hope to
deal at some length in the columns of _Everyman_ with Nietzsche's
criticism of Christianity. For the present, let it be sufficient to
say that no theologian would be prepared to accept his interpretation
of the Christian religion. The everlasting conflict of spirit against
sense and brutal force, which is the essence of Christianity, is
hardly conducive to passivity. It is, on the contrary, a consistent
discipline in modern heroism. There is not much meekness about the
Jesuits or the warrior Popes. Nor is there much melancholy about St.
Francis of Assisi or St. Theresa. The only smiling countenance in a
hospital is the Sister of Mercy. The only active resisters under the
despotism of Henry VIII. were Sir Thomas More and a broken
octogenarian priest, Cardinal Fisher.
V.
The same fundamental instinct or principle, the same defiant optimism,
the same exultation in the pride of life, which makes Nietzsche into
an opponent of Christianity, also makes him into an opponent of
democracy. The same belief in force, in the will to power, which makes
Nietzsche into a pagan, also makes him into an aristocrat. For the
political expression of Christianity must needs be democracy. We are
democrats because we are Christians, because we believe in the
essential dignity of man. On the contrary, the political outcome of
paganism must needs be despotism and aristocracy. We believe in
despotism and aristocracy because we believe in the natural inequality
of man, because we believe in force and pride and self-assertion, in
the power of the strong to oppress the weak. Nietzsche is against the
oppressed and for the oppressor; for the Superman against humanity.
For in Nietzsche's view an aristocracy is the ultimate purpose of
life.
But Nietzsche is not an aristocrat, like the ordinary Darwinian. He
does not believe in the survival of the fittest, like the typical
evolutionist. He does not believe that a survival of the fittest will
come about mechanically by the mere play of blind forces. Regression
is as natural as progression. No one has pointed this out more
convincingly than Huxley in his "Evolution and Ethics." The progress
of the race is not natural, but artificial and accidental and
precarious. Therefore Nietzsche believes in artificial selection. The
Superman is not born, he must be bred. Nietzsche is the spiritual
father and forerunner of the Eugenists.
And he is also the spiritual father of the Imperialists and latter-day
Militarists. The gospel of the inequality of the individual implies
the gospel of the inequality of race. The gospel of Nietzsche has not
only been anticipated by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, but by his much more
influential German namesake, Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the
author whose books the Kaiser liberally distributed amongst his
Generals and advisers. The doctrine of force, the belief in the German
people as the salt of the earth, the self-gratification of the modern
Teuton, can be traced directly to the influence of Zarathustra, and it
is significant that the latest German exponent of Imperialism, General
von Bernhardi, should have selected an aphorism of Nietzsche as the
quintessence of his political philosophy:
"War and courage have achieved more great things than the love of our
neighbour. It is not your sympathy, but your bravery, which has
hitherto saved the shipwrecked of existence.
"'What is good?' you ask. 'To be braced is good.'"[13]
[13] Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra," First Part, 10th
Speech.
VI.
Quite apart from any elements of truth contained in Nietzsche's
ethics, the first reason for his popularity is, no doubt, the
perfection of his form and style. Nietzsche is one of the supreme
masters of language, in a literature which counts very few masters of
language, and the beauty of his style is transparent even in the
disguise of a foreign translation.
The second reason is that Nietzsche, who imagined that he was fighting
against the times, was in reality thinking with the times, and he has
met with a ready response, in the dominant instincts of the present
age, in the aggressive materialism, in the race for wealth and power.
The Supermen and the Super-races of to-day only too cordially accept a
philosophy which seems to justify extortion, aggression, and
oppression in the name of a supreme moral principle.
The third and most important reason, and the real secret of
Nietzsche's influence, is the fine quality of his moral personality.
However much we may be repelled by the thinker, we are attracted by
the magnetism of the man, by his noble courage, by his splendid
integrity, by his love of truth, his hatred of cant. Even though he
has himself misunderstood Christianity, he has done a great deal to
bring us back to the fundamental ideals of the Christian religion. He
has done a great deal to undermine that superficial and "rose-water"
view of Christianity current in official and academic Protestant
circles. He has done a great deal to convince us that whatever may be
the essence of Christianity, it has nothing in common with that silly
and pedantic game which, for half a century, has made Eternal Religion
depend on the conclusions of "Higher Criticism," and which has made
theology and philosophy the handmaidens of archæology and philology.
Nietzsche is a formidable foe of Christianity, but he is a magnanimous
foe, who certainly brings us nearer to a comprehension of the inmost
meaning of the very doctrines he attacks. And it is quite possible
that the Christian champion of the future may incorporate Nietzsche in
his apologetics, even as St. Thomas Aquinas incorporated Aristotle,
even as Pascal incorporated Montaigne. It was in the fitness of things
that Nietzsche should be the descendant of a long line of Protestant
ministers. For, indeed, he is the last of the true German Protestants,
ever ready to protest and to defy and to challenge. He is the noblest
of modern German heretics.
II.--MONTAIGNE AND NIETZSCHE.
I.
There is a continuity and heredity in the transmission of ideas as
there is in the transmission of life. Each great thinker has a
spiritual posterity, which for centuries perpetuates his doctrine and
his moral personality. And there is no keener intellectual enjoyment
than to trace back to their original progenitors one of those mighty
and original systems which are the milestones in the history of human
thought.
It is with such a spiritual transmission that I am concerned in the
present paper. I would like to establish the intimate connection which
exists between Montaigne and Nietzsche, between the greatest of French
moralists and the greatest of Germans. A vast literature has grown up
in recent years round the personality and works of Nietzsche, which
would already fill a moderately sized library. It is therefore strange
that no critic should have emphasized and explained the close
filiation between him and Montaigne. It is all the more strange
because Nietzsche himself has acknowledged his debt to the "Essays"
with a frankness which leaves no room to doubt.
To anyone who knows how careful Nietzsche was to safeguard his
originality, such an acknowledgment is in itself sufficient proof of
the immense power which Montaigne wielded over Nietzsche at a decisive
and critical period of his intellectual development. But only a
systematic comparison could show that we have to do here with
something more than a mental stimulus and a quickening of ideas, that
Montaigne's "Essays" have provided the foundations of Nietzsche's
philosophy, and that the Frenchman may rightly be called, and in a
very definite sense, the "spiritual father" of the German.
II.
At first sight this statement must appear paradoxical, and a first
reading of the two writers reveals their differences rather than their
resemblances. The one strikes us as essentially the sane; the other,
even in his first books, reveals that lack of mental balance which
was to terminate in insanity. The one is a genial sceptic; the other
is a fanatic dogmatist. To Montaigne life is a comedy; to his disciple
life is a tragedy. The one philosophizes with a smile; the other, to
use his own expression, philosophizes with a hammer. The one is a
Conservative; the other is a herald of revolt. The one is
constitutionally moderate and temperate; the other is nearly always
extreme and violent in his judgment. The one is a practical man of the
world; the other is a poet and a dreamer and a mystic. The one is
quaintly pedantic, and his page is often a mosaic of quotations; the
other is supremely original. The one is profuse in his professions of
loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church; the other calls himself
Anti-Christ.
III.
There can be no doubt that if the characteristics which we have just
referred to belonged essentially to Montaigne, there would be little
affinity between the thought of Nietzsche and that of Montaigne. And
it would be impossible to account for the magnetic attraction which
drew Nietzsche to the study of the "Essays," and for the enthusiasm
with which they inspired him. But I am convinced that those
characteristics are not the essential characteristics. I am convinced
that there is another Montaigne who has nothing in common with the
Montaigne of convention and tradition. I am convinced that the
scepticism, the Conservatism, the irony, the moderation, the
affectation of humility, frivolity, pedantry, and innocent candour,
are only a mask and disguise which Montaigne has put on to conceal his
identity, that they are only so many tricks and dodges to lead the
temporal and spiritual powers off the track, and to reassure them as
to his orthodoxy. I am convinced that beneath and beyond the Montaigne
of convention and tradition there is another much bigger and much
deeper Montaigne, whose identity would have staggered his
contemporaries, and would have landed him in prison. And it is this
unconventional and real Montaigne who is the spiritual father of
Nietzsche.
It is obviously impossible, within the limits of a brief paper, to
prove this far-reaching statement and to establish the existence of an
esoteric and profound meaning in the "Essays." I shall only refer to a
passage which is ignored by most commentators, which has been added in
the posthumous edition, in which Montaigne himself admits such a
double and esoteric meaning, and which seems to me to give the key to
the interpretation of the "Essays":
"I know very well that when I hear anyone dwell upon the language of
my essays, I had rather a great deal he would say nothing: 'tis not so
much to elevate the style as to depress the sense, and so much the
more offensively as they do it obliquely; and yet I am much deceived
if many other writers deliver more worth noting as to the matter, and,
how well or ill soever, if any other writer has sown things much more
material, or at all events more downright, upon his paper than myself.
To bring the more in, I only muster up the heads; should I annex the
sequel I should trebly multiply the volume. And how many stories have
I scattered up and down in this book, that I only touch upon, which,
should anyone more curiously search into, they would find matter
enough to produce infinite essays. Neither those stories nor my
quotations always serve simply for example, authority, or ornament; I
do not only regard them for the use I make of them; they carry
sometimes, besides what I apply them to, the seed of a more rich and a
bolder matter, and sometimes, collaterally, a more delicate sound,
both to myself, who will say no more about it in this place, and to
others who shall be of my humour."
IV.
The real and esoteric Montaigne is, like Nietzsche, a herald of
revolt, one of the most revolutionary thinkers of all times. And the
Gascon philosopher who philosophizes with a smile is far more
dangerous than the Teuton who philosophizes with a hammer. The
corrosive acid of his irony is more destructive than the violence of
the other. Like Nietzsche, Montaigne transvalues all our moral values.
Nothing is absolute; everything is relative. There is no law in
morals.
"The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature,
proceed from custom; everyone having an inward veneration for the
opinions and manners approved and received amongst his own people,
cannot, without very great reluctance, depart from them, nor apply
himself to them without applause."
There is no absolute law in politics. And one form of government is as
good as another.
"Such people as have been bred up to liberty, and subject to no other
dominion but the authority of their own will, look upon all other
forms of government as monstrous and contrary to nature. Those who are
inured to monarchy do the same; and what opportunity soever fortune
presents them with to change, even then, when with the greatest
difficulties they have disengaged themselves from one master, that was
troublesome and grievous to them, they presently run, with the same
difficulties, to create another; being unable to take into hatred
subjection itself."
There is no law in religion. There is no justification in patriotism.
The choice of religion is not a matter of conscience or of reason, but
of custom and climate. We are Christians by the same title as we are
Perigordins or Germans.
V.
If to destroy all human principles and illusions is to be a sceptic,
Montaigne is the greatest sceptic that ever existed. But Montaigne's
scepticism is only a means to an end. On the ruin of all philosophies
and religions Montaigne, like Nietzsche, has built up a dogmatism of
his own. The foundation of that dogmatism in both is an unbounded
faith in life and in nature. Like Nietzsche, Montaigne is an optimist.
At the very outset of the "Essays" he proclaims the joy of life. He
preaches the _gaya scienza_, the _fröhliche Wissenschaft_. All our
sufferings are due to our departing from the teachings of Nature. The
chapter on cannibalism, from which Shakespeare has borrowed a famous
passage in "The Tempest," and which has probably suggested the
character of Caliban, must be taken in literal sense. The savage who
lives in primitive simplicity comes nearer to Montaigne's ideal of
perfection than the philosopher and the saint.
VI.
And this brings us to the fundamental analogy between Nietzsche and
Montaigne. Like the German, the Frenchman is a pure pagan. Here,
again, we must not be misled by the innumerable professions of faith,
generally added in later editions and not included in the edition of
1580. Montaigne is uncompromisingly hostile to Christianity. His
Catholicism must be understood as the Catholicism of Auguste Comte,
defined by Huxley--namely, Catholicism minus Christianity. He
glorifies suicide. He abhors the self-suppression of asceticism; he
derides chastity, humility, mortification--every virtue which we are
accustomed to associate with the Christian faith. He glorifies
self-assertion and the pride of life. Not once does he express even
the most remote sympathy for the heroes of the Christian Church, for
the saints and martyrs. On the other hand, again and again he indulges
in lyrical raptures for the achievements of the great men of Greece
and Rome. He is an intellectual aristocrat. His ideal policy is the
policy of the Spartans--"almost miraculous in its perfection." His
ideal man is the pagan hero--the superman of antiquity--Alcibiades,
Epaminondas, Alexander, Julius Cæsar.
III.--TREITSCHKE[14] AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRUSSIANISM.
[14] Treitschke, "History of Germany," Vols. I. and II.
(Jarrold.) Treitschke, "Politics," with Introduction by A. J.
Balfour: 2 vols, (Constable, London.)
There is a most baneful delusion which has misled the Allies from the
beginning of the war, and which is still being acted on after three
years of a desperate struggle--namely, that we are mainly fighting a
sinister political dynasty and a formidable political machine
constructed with all the diabolical ingenuity and armed with all the
resources of the destructive genius of man. If, indeed, we had only
been confronted by the Kaiser and his paladins, or only threatened by
his military machine, the war would long ago have been ended--if not
by the Allies, then by the German people themselves. Millions of
people, however loyal, do not allow themselves to be slaughtered for a
dynast, even though that dynast claims to be a Superman, even though he
be called Prince of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen or Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt,
even though he be called Prince Henry XXI. of Reuss of the younger
branch or Prince Henry LXXXVIII. of Reuss of the older branch. Whole
nations do not indefinitely submit to being the slaves of a machine,
however diabolical and however perfect. The truth is that behind the
German princes and princelings and Junkers there is the resolve of a
united people. Behind the Prussian machine there is the driving power
of tremendous spiritual and moral forces, of an inflexible purpose, of
a compelling idealism, of a mystical creed accepted with more than
Mohammedan fanaticism. It is that national purpose, it is those
spiritual forces, which explain the unconquerable pride of the German
people, as evil and as lofty as the pride of Satan in "Paradise Lost."
It is these which explain their devotion and self-sacrifice, it is
these which explain the Teutonic legions marching to their doom
singing their hymns of love as well as their hymns of hatred. It is
these which explain the two million volunteers which in August, 1914,
went to swell the huge German conscript armies. It is the obsession of
that mystical German creed which explains the epic achievements of the
German offensive and the even more astounding achievements of the
German defensive. We may continue to denounce the crimes of Germany
and the atrocities of the German soldiery--and I have personally
denounced them until my readers must have got sick of my
denunciations. But there is nothing particularly mysterious in crimes
and atrocities, and crimes and atrocities alone do not help to explain
the German soul. Crimes and atrocities do not make us understand how
even to-day the German hosts are still able to challenge a whole world
in arms.
Let us, then, take in the vital fact that after three years those
German spiritual forces, those perverted German ideals, remain the
most formidable obstacle in our path. We may continue to destroy the
German armies by the slow process of attrition, and we may continue to
sacrifice the flower of our youth until the process is completed. We
may trust to our superiority in money-power and in man-power, but
unless we also break the moral power of German ideals, unless we
exorcise the spell which possesses the German mind, unless we triumph
in the spiritual contest as well as in the battle of tanks and
howitzers, unless we overthrow the idols which successive generations
of great teachers and preachers have imposed on a susceptible,
receptive, and docile people, there will be no early settlement, nor,
however long belated, can there ever be a lasting peace.
The foregoing remarks may justify the following attempt to interpret
and to make intelligible, even to the most inattentive reader, the
creed of one of the most powerful of those teachers and preachers who
have taken such mysterious and uncanny possession of the soul of the
German nation. Before 1914 none except a few initiated had ever heard
of Treitschke. Since 1914 he has become a household name and a name of
evil import. But to the immense majority of readers that name, however
familiar and ominous, remains an empty name. _Nomen flatus vocis._ And
even those to whom the name conveys something more definite do not
trouble about its meaning. With that strange disbelief in the power of
ideas which is one of our lamentable weaknesses, and which even the
war has not been able to cure, even yet we have not brought ourselves
to take seriously those terrible theories which have burnt themselves
into the Teutonic imagination. And so indifferent have we remained to
doctrines so far-reaching and so deadly that the recent publication of
an excellent English translation of Treitschke's "German History," one
of the masterpieces of historical literature, has had to be suspended
for the incredible reason that there was no British public to read
it.
On approaching the study of Treitschke's works, we are at once
impressed by the inexorable logic of his political and moral creed.
There is, perhaps, no other instance of a system so splendidly
consistent in its principles. We are told that the great French
naturalist, Cuvier, was able to reconstruct the whole anatomy of an
animal merely through examining the structure of a tooth or the
fragment of a bone. Applying to the German historian the method which
Cuvier applied to the antediluvian mastodon, we can reduce the whole
complex political philosophy of Treitschke from a few fundamental
principles which he follows with a single mind, and which the Prussian
State has applied with an equally relentless consistency both in its
internal and in its foreign policy.
It is this magnificent consistency, this confident dogmatism, which
gives us the secret of the enormous influence of Treitschke on his
countrymen, as it explains the hypnotism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on a
previous generation. I do not think it would be easy to overestimate
the extent of that influence. It is true that in one sense
Treitschke's political philosophy only expresses the Prussian policy,
and that he did not create it. But when a political ideal is expounded
with such clarity and such force, when it is propagated with such
enthusiasm, when it takes such exclusive hold of the mind, it becomes
a hundred times more efficient and more dangerous; it acquires the
compelling force and inspires the fanaticism of religion. Those
readers who will follow Treitschke's close reasoning to the end will
probably agree with me that the political creed of which he has been
the apostle and prophet is substantially the same creed which has
plunged Europe into the present world war, and that, more than any one
thinker, much more certainly than Nietzsche, Treitschke must be held
responsible for the catastrophe.
I have confined myself to expounding the doctrines of Treitschke. I
have not attempted to refute them. It is not my object to denounce:
there is always a sufficient number of publicists ever ready to
undertake the task of denunciation. I am only trying to understand.
Nor have I dwelt on any side-issues. I have restricted myself to those
simple and fundamental axioms which have directed the policy of
Prussia. Almost invariably in human history it is only the simple,
sweeping dogmas which obtain universal acceptance.
I.--TREITSCHKE AS THE REPRESENTATIVE PRUSSIAN.
There exist in the realm of fiction certain literary types which are
an equal joy to the creative artist and to the student of human
nature. There are certain malignant diseases which are an inspiration
to the pathologist. And there are criminal cases which are a
revelation to the lawyer: test cases which lead up to new discoveries
and illustrate fundamental principles. What those classical types of
Balzac or Dostoievski are to the critic, what those diseases and
criminal cases are to the surgeon and the lawyer, the writings of
Treitschke are to the student of history and politics; they throw a
new and vivid light on the dark and hidden depths of the Prussian
mind. They reveal like no other German writings the meaning of German
policy, the spirit which inspires it. They explain what without them
would have remained unexplained. He is much more than the historian of
the Prussian State, he is the champion of its ideals. Much better than
Bismarck, or the Kaiser, or than the "Clown Prince," he makes clear to
us the aims and the aspirations of the Hohenzollern monarchy and of
the German nation.
In the history of literature and thought it is given to but very few
writers thus to become the spokesmen of a whole people. To achieve
such importance a writer must possess many qualifications. He must
possess a strong and dominating character. He must be a great literary
artist. He must be a clear, a bold, and an independent thinker. The
following pages will show in how eminent a degree Treitschke possessed
all those qualities and how unreservedly they were placed at the
service of the Prussian cause.
II.--TREITSCHKE'S PERSONALITY.
The first quality which challenges attention is the commanding
strength of his personality. He combines the most contradictory gifts:
the temperament of the artist, the imagination of the poet, the
inspiring faith of the idealist, the practical sense of the realist,
and the enthusiasm of the apostle. He always impresses you with that
magnetic sense of power into which Carlyle impresses his readers. Like
Carlyle, he is a firm believer in the heroic, and he has himself the
temper of a hero. Three of his volumes of essays bear the significant
title, "Deutsche Kämpfe" ("German Battles"). All through his career
Treitschke has been fighting his patriotic battles. Obsessed by his
ideals, he always has the courage of his convictions, and is always
ready to suffer for them. In his early youth he had a painful quarrel
with his father, a Saxon General and a loyal servant of the Saxon
dynasty, because the son would not refrain from his attacks on Saxon
"particularism" and would not abstain from championing the Prussian
cause. Treitschke never evades a difficulty. He is never swayed by
outside influences. He never dreads contradiction. When facts do not
tally with his favourite theories, he brushes them away. And he never
accepts any compromise. He is all made of one piece. He has the
hardness of granite. He has never been afraid of unpopularity. He has
always been a loyal friend and an equally staunch hater.
III.--TREITSCHKE AS A WRITER.
"Le style est l'homme." Never was Buffon's dictum more strikingly
verified, and never did any literary style reveal so completely the
personality of the man. Treitschke's style is imperious and
aggressive. It has the ring of the General who gives the word of
command. His sentences are not involved, as German sentences generally
are. They are pregnant and concise. Treitschke often reminds one of a
writer whom of all others he most cordially detests. Like Heine,
Treitschke is incisive, epigrammatic. His phrase has always muscle and
nerve: it has warmth and fervour. Treitschke has not the gift of
humour. A German seldom possesses that redeeming gift. But he wields
the weapon of trenchant irony with terrible force, and he adds the
poet's power of vision and the true historian's sense of reality and
sense of individuality. He has Macaulay's gift of orderly narrative.
He is equally masterly in describing a battle scene, a meeting of
diplomatists, a revolutionary movement. His picture of the Congress of
Vienna is unsurpassed in historical literature. Like Saint-Simon, he
can sum up a character in a few lines. German historians are seldom
skilful portrait-painters. Treitschke forms an exception. His
portraits of Talleyrand, of Metternich, of Tsar Alexander I., of
Leopold I., King of the Belgians, are masterpieces of the literary
craft.
IV.--TREITSCHKE AS A CLEAR AND ORIGINAL THINKER.
But all those artistic gifts would not have given him his commanding
influence in the world of practical politics if he had not added the
gifts of clear thinking and luminous exposition, which are so very
rare in Germany. Treitschke is essentially an honest and systematic
thinker. As Professor of History in the University of Berlin, he was
accustomed to make intricate and abstract subjects interesting and
intelligible to vast audiences of students. We are never left in any
doubt as to his inner meaning. He always goes straight to the point.
There are no equivocations or mental reservations. He has the brevity
but none of the ambiguity of the lawgiver. There are no gaps in his
reasoning. He moves from one point to another in orderly sequence. Our
intellectual and artistic joy in following the severe and simple
outline of his political system is only marred by the thought of the
appalling practical consequences of those doctrines.
And not only is he a clear thinker. He is also an original and
independent thinker. He has not the professional taint of the German
pedant. He has the German professor's minute knowledge of concrete
facts, and his doctrinaire love of abstract principles, but he is not
a mere scholar and teacher. He always remains the man of the world,
and he brings to the consideration of historical problems the
practical experience which he gained as a journalist and as a member
of the Reichstag. He does not apply any conventional standards to his
judgments of men and events. He looks at everything from his own
angle. There is a delightful freshness about everything he writes. He
believes that the first duty of an historian is to be partial. He
always follows a bias, but it is his own bias. In his German history
he has not been content with digging up thousands of new facts from
the recesses of German records; he gives his own interpretation to the
facts. He has no respect for established fame, for existing theories.
He delights in shocking his readers. In his "Götzendämmerung," or
"Twilight of the Gods," Nietzsche has shown us how to "philosophize
with a hammer." Treitschke has written history with a hammer, and all
his writings are strewn with the fragments of broken idols and
shattered reputations.
V.--THE PRUSSIAN STATE THE CENTRE OF TREITSCHKE'S LITERARY ACTIVITIES.
All Treitschke's activities have centred round one subject: the
history and policy of the Prussian State. All his loyalties are given
to one cause, the supremacy of the German Empire led by the Prussian
State. He has been a voluminous writer, and he has written on the most
varied subjects. But all those subjects have only been taken up with
the one object of elucidating Prussian problems and directing Prussian
policy. His studies on Federalism, on the United Netherlands--by far
the most suggestive survey of Dutch history which has so far been
attempted--are intended to solve the problem of the relation of
Prussia to the Federal States of the German Empire. His study on
Cavour and Italian unity was undertaken as an introduction to the
study of German unity. His admirable monograph on that strange and
unique military theocracy of the Teutonic order was an essay on the
early history of Prussia. His volume on Bonapartism was a study of the
chief political opponent of Prussian supremacy. Briefly, all his
volumes of essays have been preparatory to his life-work, the history
of Germany, and the history of Germany itself is always kept
subordinate to the history of the Prussian State.
VI.--TREITSCHKE'S TREATISE ON POLITICS.
It is much to be regretted that the British public should have been
first introduced to Treitschke's "History of Germany." The "History of
Germany" is, no doubt, the most important and the most monumental,
but it is by no means the most interesting nor the most significant of
Treitschke's writings. German history could never be as arresting to a
Continental student as British or French history. It is not mixed up
with universal events. It is too parochial. It does not evoke human
sympathy. With all the magic of Treitschke's art, we feel that we are
following, not the great highway, but one of the by-ways of history.
We cannot get absorbed in the petty quarrels of the princelings of the
German Federation. Of the five volumes of Treitschke's "German
History," the only part which is of general interest is the first
volume, dealing with the rise of Prussia, the reign of Frederick the
Great and his successors, the Napoleonic wars, and the Congress of
Vienna.
As often happens, it is mainly through his minor writings that
Treitschke will live--through his "Cavour," his "United Netherlands,"
his "Bonapartism," and his Biographical Essays. But to the
philosophical student by far the most important of Treitschke's
writings are his two volumes on the Science of Politics, which are,
without exception, the most fascinating and the most suggestive
political treatise published in this generation. Political treatises
are proverbially dull and out of touch with reality. Treitschke's
treatise is a solitary exception. To him politics are not, like
mathematics, an abstract or a deductive science. We cannot build an
ideal political structure in the air. The political thinker must be
more modest in his ambitions. He cannot adduce first principles. All
politics must be _Realpolitik_. All politics must be based on
concrete historical facts--_i.e._, circumscribed in time and space.
Indeed, strictly considered, political philosophy is only applied
history. That is why political treatises are so disappointing. The
philosopher is content to generalize, and does not know the facts. On
the other hand, the historian who knows the facts has not the capacity
of generalization. Politics must be mainly empirical. The political
thinker does not reason forward from the past to the present, but
backwards from the present to the past. He studies the present results
of the mature experience of many ages, and then explains the distant
past in the light of the present.
VII.--PRUSSIA THE SOLE STANDARD OF POLITICAL VALUES.
Not only has Prussian history been the centre of all Treitschke's
activities; it also supplies him with the sole standard of all
political values, the sole test of the truth of all political
theories. With superb logic he deduces all his political system from
the vicissitudes of the Brandenburg State. His sympathies and
antipathies, his affinities and repulsions, are Prussian. Prussia and
the German Empire have monopolized all human virtues. His only enemies
are the enemies of the Prussian State (see paragraphs VIII. and IX. of
this Essay).
Prussia is a national State, exclusive, self-sufficient,
self-contained. Therefore, the national State is the supreme and final
political reality (see paragraph XI.).
All the theories which challenge or threaten this conception of the
national State are dismissed by Treitschke as damnable heresies: the
heresy of individualism (see paragraph XII.), the heresy of
internationalism (see paragraph XIII.), and the heresy of imperialism
(paragraph XIV.).
The one aim of the Prussian State has been the extension of Prussian
power. Therefore the will to power must be the fundamental dogma of
the State (paragraph XV.).
Prussia has always subordinated political ethics to national
aggrandizement; therefore Treitschke holds with Machiavelli that in
politics the end justifies the means (paragraph XVI.).
Prussia has only expanded through war. War has been the national
industry of the Prussian people. Therefore war is considered by
Treitschke as the vital principle of national life (paragraph XVII.).
Prussia has been the family estate of the Hohenzollern dynasty;
therefore the monarchy must be considered as the ideal form of
government (paragraph XVIII.).
The Prussian military aristocracy of Junkers have been the mainstay of
the Prussian State; therefore an aristocratic government is a
corollary of the monarchic form of government, and the French
democratic theory of government is the arch-heresy (paragraphs XIX.
and XX.).
Prussia has been the leading Protestant State; therefore Roman
Catholicism must be held to be inconsistent with the prosperity of any
modern polity (paragraph XXI.).
Prussia, from a small straggling territory, has grown to be one of the
leading Powers of Europe by the gradual absorption of all the
surrounding small States; therefore only great Powers have a right to
exist (paragraph XXII.); therefore small States are a monstrosity
(paragraph XXIII.).
VIII.--TREITSCHKE'S POLITICAL PAGANISM.
There is no counterpart in modern history to the development of the
Prussian State, no political structure so entirely self-contained and
self-sufficient, which has so continuously pursued its own selfish
ends. For an exact analogy it is necessary to revert to ancient
history; therefore Treitschke's sympathies go to the ancient State
much more than to the modern State. In his religion he is a devout
Lutheran. But in his political conceptions he is entirely pagan. To
him the politics of Aristotle remain the fountain of all political
wisdom. The modern man in order to understand the majesty of the State
must free himself of a whole mass of acquired notions. In quiet and
peaceful times the average man may pursue his private avocations and
hardly give a thought to the State. It was different in antiquity. The
ancient city State was everything, and was felt to be everything, so
that the citizen could not conceive himself as apart from the State.
That is why they had a much stronger and healthier political sense, an
instinctive comprehension for, and a passionate devotion to, the
State. The moderns have ceased to live and move in the State. They are
divided and distracted by their social and economic interests. Only
the modern Prussian feels for Prussia as the Roman and the Spartan
felt for their native countries. To the Prussian alone, as to the
Roman and the Spartan, the devotion to the State is glorified into a
religion, the religion of patriotism.
IX.--TREITSCHKE'S ANTIPATHIES AND HATREDS.
Even as his sympathies, so are Treitschke's antipathies determined by
his Prussian preconceptions. Whatever is alien to Prussian ideals is
odious to Treitschke. Whoever has opposed the growth of the Prussian
State or threatened its future becomes a personal enemy. And, as every
State has had to oppose the predatory policy of Prussia, and is
threatened by its ambitions, as, to use Treitschke's own words,
"Prussia was the best hated of all the German States from the first
days of her independent history," the antipathies of the Prussian
historian are almost universal. And what a fierce hater he is; what
unlimited power of vituperation; what intensity of bitter feeling! He
hates Talleyrand, Lord Palmerston, King Leopold of Belgium, with a
personal animosity. He hates Britain and France. He hates Austria and
the small German Principalities. He hates Belgium and Holland; and,
above all, he loathes and despises the Jews.
X.--TREITSCHKE'S HATRED OF THE JEWS.
No nation inspires Treitschke with a more instinctive repulsion than
the Jews. He may be called the father of scientific and pedantic
anti-Semitism. In other nations anti-Semitism was only an instinctive
and irrational popular feeling. In Treitschke anti-Semitism becomes a
systematic doctrine. It becomes part of a political creed. Treitschke
hates the Jews because they are unwarlike, because they are absorbed
in material interests, because they are Atheists. He abhors the Gospel
according to Saint Marx. He denounces the cynicism of Heine. He dreads
the influence of the Jewish Press. But, above all, he hates the Jews
because they are denationalized, because they have no stake in the
prosperity and greatness of the national State. The Jews are wanderers
without a settled existence, without allegiance and loyalty except to
their own race. The dual political life which the Jews are leading as
members of the Jewish nation and as parasites of other national States
to which they have temporarily migrated is a permanent menace to a
healthy national German life. Everywhere the Jews are revolutionists,
anarchists, Atheists. All the leaders of the German Social
Democracy--Lassalle, Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Bernstein--are Hebrews. It
is the imperative duty of all Prussian patriots to guard the people
against the Jewish danger, against Jewish journalism, Jewish finance,
Jewish materialism, Jewish socialism, and Jewish internationalism.
XI.--THE THEORY OF THE NATIONAL STATE.
Let us revert to the starting-point of Treitschke's politics, which is
the theory of the national State. Only in the national State can the
individual realize the higher moral and political life. The State is
not part of a larger whole. It is in itself a self-contained whole. It
is not a means to an end; it is an end in itself. It is not a
relative conception; it is an absolute. The French people may fight
for humanity. A St. Louis may be inspired with the crusading spirit.
Treitschke has no sympathy for such quixotism. The national State must
be selfish. To be unselfish is the mortal sin of politics. Humanity,
sentimentalism, have no place in politics. Frederick William IV., the
one sentimental King in the whole history of the Hohenzollern Dynasty,
once rendered an unselfish service to his neighbours. A Prussian army
saved the Saxon monarchy from revolution and then withdrew. Treitschke
has no words strong enough to condemn this solitary instance of a
disinterested Prussian policy.
The national State is alone invested with the attributes of
sovereignty. There is nothing above it. National rights must be final.
The national State may for the time being limit its absolute
sovereignty by international agreements, but any such agreements are
only conditional and temporary--_rebus sic stantibus_. No national
State can make international agreements which are binding for the
future. The time must always come when the scrap of paper has to be
torn asunder. It is true that the national State is indirectly playing
its part in the moral education of humanity, but it will best serve
humanity by only thinking of itself.
XII.--THE HERESY OF INDIVIDUALISM.
There are many heresies which threaten the orthodox religion of the
national State. The first and the most dangerous is the heresy of
individualism. A school of modern theorists, William von Humboldt and
John Stuart Mill, have asserted the rights of the individual apart
from and above the rights of the State. They reserve for the
individual a sphere where the State may not encroach. According to
Mill, the political life is only a part and the minor part of his
social activities. His higher activities are spent in the service of
the Church, in the service of Art and Science.
Treitschke has fought this heresy of individualism in all his
writings. The interest of the individual cannot be opposed to the
interest of the State. The individual can only realize himself, he can
only realize the higher life, in and through the State. It is the
State which sets free the spiritual forces of the individual by
securing for him security, prosperity, and economic independence.
XIII.--THE HERESY OF INTERNATIONALISM.
The second deadly heresy which threatens the dogma of the national
State is the heresy of internationalism. It takes the form either of
the black internationalism of the Catholic Church or the red
internationalism of Social Democracy. Treitschke has fought Roman
Catholicism and its champions, the Jesuits, with relentless hate.
Through all his writings there sounds the watchword of Voltaire, the
spiritual adviser of Frederick the Great, "Écrasez l'infâme," and the
battle-cry of Gambetta, "Le clericalisme, voilà l'ennemi." Nor is he
less bitter against the Socialists. Bismarck and the Kaiser opposed
the encroachments of the Social Democracy in a succession of
anti-Socialist repressive measures. Treitschke may have disapproved of
some of the _Sozialisten Gesetze_ because they defeated their purpose.
But he shares the Kaiser's hatred against those irreconcilable enemies
of Prussian greatness. The Social Democratic theories of the
Jews--Lassalle, Marx, and Bernstein--are one of the most deadly
poisons that imperil the constitution of the German body politic.
Events have shown how little even Treitschke realized the strength of
the Prussian State and the fanaticism of German nationalism. We know
how little his dread of the black International of Catholicism and the
red International of Socialism has been justified by the servile
attitude of all the Opposition parties, and how, when the crisis came,
both Catholics and Socialists proved as Prussian as the Junkers of
Pomerania.
XIV.--THE HERESY OF IMPERIALISM.
If it be true that the citizen can only realize himself through the
national State, if the whole course of human history is essentially a
conflict of national States, and if the rich variety of civilization
is made up of the rivalry of those national States, it logically
follows that the expansion of any national State into a world empire
must necessarily be baneful. The State must, no doubt, expand, but
there is a limit to that expansion. The State must not incorporate any
alien races which it cannot assimilate. When the State is unable to
absorb heterogeneous elements and grows into a world empire, it
becomes a danger both to itself and to humanity.
Civilization has been threatened in the past by such monstrous
conglomerates of heterogeneous nations. It has been threatened by the
Spanish tyranny of Charles V. and the French tyranny of Louis XIV. and
Napoleon. It is still threatened to-day by a similar danger. Two
national States, Great Britain and Russia, have again grown into world
empires. If their ambitions were to succeed, if the greater part of
the civilized world were to become either Anglo-Saxon or Russian,
there would be an end to the diversity and the liberty of modern
civilization. Only the good sword of Prussia and Germany can save
humanity from that Anglo-Saxon and Slav peril.
XV.--THE DOGMA OF THE "WILL TO POWER."
But the fact that there is danger in the unlimited expansion of the
national State ought not to prevent us from recognizing that
irresistible tendency to expansion. The "will to power" is the essence
of the State. "The State is power" (_Der Staat ist Macht_) must ever
be the first axiom of political science. Muddled political thinkers,
who confuse the spiritual with the temporal activities of man, may
hold that the end of the State is social justice, or the diffusion of
light, or the propagation of religion, or the advancement of humanity.
But the cause of justice, the spread of education, will best be
furthered if the State is strong. Only the strong can be just,
partial, and enlightened. The sole criterion of political values is
strength. It is the supreme merit of Machiavelli that he has been the
first to emphasize this cardinal truth. The mortal sin of a State is
to be weak. Only the strong man, only a Bismarck, a Richelieu, a
Cavour, is a true statesman.
And that strength of the State which is its chief attribute must not
be dispersed; that political power must neither be divided nor
alienated. Many writers on politics still echo the absurd theory of
Montesquieu on the division of the executive, legislative, and the
judiciary. Treitschke, following Rousseau, lays down the axiom that
the power of the State is indivisible and inalienable.
XVI.--THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS.
If the one virtue of the State is to be strong and to assert its
strength, it follows that the ethics of the State cannot be the ethics
of the individual. The ruler of the State is not the head of a
monastery or the president of an academy of fine arts. The end must
justify the means, and any means may be employed which will add to the
strength of the State. It is the glory of Frederick the Great that he
has always had the moral courage of brushing away conventions and
scruples to achieve his object, and that he has always had the
political insight and wisdom of adjusting the means to the end.
XVII.--WAR AS THE VITAL PRINCIPLE OF POLITICAL LIFE.
Prussia is not, like France, the result of a thousand years of natural
growth. It has no definite natural boundaries. The Prussian State is
an artificial creation. It has grown and expanded through conquest.
It is the Order of the Teutonic Knights, it is the warrior dynasty of
the Hohenzollern, who have built up Prussian power. That purely
military growth of the Prussian State is made by Treitschke into a
universal rule of all political growth. According to him war always
was and will remain the master-builder of national life. Other
thinkers, like Joseph de Maistre, have glorified war in the name of
theology. Treitschke extols it in the name of politics. War not only
makes a State: it makes the citizen. The heroic virtues are warlike
virtues; they are the outcome of military institutions. It is not war
but peace which is the evil. Woe to the nation which allows itself to
be deceived by the sentiment and cowardice of pacifists.
XVIII.--THE MONARCHY AS THE IDEAL FORM OF GOVERNMENT.
War is the essential activity of the State. But in order to be strong
in war, unity and concentration are essential; they are the conditions
of victory. That unity may, no doubt, be achieved under any form of
government. It may be achieved under a republic, as it was during the
wars of the French Revolution. It may be achieved under an
aristocracy, as in the case of Great Britain, which is a monarchy only
in name, which, in reality, is a Parliamentary oligarchy, and which is
always waging some guerilla in some outlying post of empire. But the
fact remains that unity can be best achieved under a monarchic form of
government, which concentrates all powers into the hands of the
responsible monarch. That is why monarchy is the best form of
government.
XIX.--THE ARISTOCRACY AS THE MAINSTAY OF THE MONARCHIC STATE.
A loyal military aristocracy like the Junkers is the mainstay of a
national monarchy. An aristocratic constitution of the State is in
conformity with the nature of things. Not only all military activities
but all social and economic life depends on the distinction of
classes, on the existence of different grades corresponding to a
difference in natural endowment, in social service. The equality of
man not only is an unattainable ideal, it is also an undesirable and a
mischievous ideal. Suppress inequality and distinctions and honours
and you suppress the main stimulus of human endeavour; you suppress
that rich differentiation of social life, that generous rivalry, that
noble ambition, which are the conditions of all intensive human
activity.
XX.--THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY DOGMA OF EQUALITY.
The greatest danger, therefore, to the monarchic and aristocratic
constitution of the State arises from the insidious advance of the
French revolutionary dogma of equality. The spirit of envy is
undermining the social hierarchy in every country. That mean spirit of
democratic envy is as old as the democratic institution itself.
Ostracism in the nobler elements of the community is as characteristic
of the Greek democracy as of the French. All democracies have resented
that Aristides should be called the "Just." So far it is only the
Prussian State which has escaped from the poisonous doctrine of
Rousseau. But even in Prussia the progress of the Gospel according to
Saint Marx is a disquieting symptom. To defend the prerogatives of the
Junkers against the assaults of the Social Democracy must therefore be
one of the main political concerns of a patriotic Prussian.
XXI.--THE PLEA FOR PROTESTANTISM.
It may be said that Protestantism is so closely identified with modern
German history that it may almost be considered as the Germanic form
of Christianity. Certainly Prussia is an essentially Protestant State.
From the beginning it has grown from the secularization of Church
property, when a Hohenzollern Grand Master, following the advice of
Luther, took the bold step of confiscating the demesnes of the
Teutonic Order. But it is not only Prussia that has grown and
prospered through Protestantism. The Protestant form of Christianity
in whatever form is essential to the very existence of the modern
State. For no State can exist unless the spiritual power be
subordinated to the temporal power. The Protestant Church must needs
accept that subordination because Protestantism must necessarily
result in a diversity of rival and powerless sects, and therefore, if
it be true that Protestantism is necessary for the State, the State is
even more necessary to Protestantism. The old dictum, _Cujus regio,
illius religio_, holds good of Prussia. The spiritual allegiance
follows the temporal allegiance. The State alone can secure for those
different Churches that peace and toleration without which religious
war becomes a chronic evil. Toleration and the peaceful coexistence
of many Churches under the protection of the State have been for
centuries the boast and glory of the Prussian State.
Catholicism does not accept that necessary subordination. The German
State of the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Empire of the Hohenstaufen,
perished because of the conflict with the Papacy. The modern Teutonic
State, the Holy German Empire of the Habsburg, has equally perished
through clericalism. Catholicism is an international power, and the
State must be national. Catholicism is encroaching and threatening the
national State, and the State must remain independent and supreme;
therefore Catholicism, ultramontanism, clericalism, are absolutely
incompatible with the modern State.
XXII.--THE NECESSITY OF GREAT POWERS.
Inasmuch as power is the main attribute of the State, it follows that
only those States which are sufficiently strong in population, in
territory, and in financial resources, have a right to exist. There is
a definite limit below which a State cannot fulfil its mission nor
defend its existence. We must not be deceived by the example of such
States as Athens, Venice, Holland, and Florence, which, although
apparently small in territory, yet played an important part in
political history. Those States were only small in outward appearance;
in reality they were either the centres of a vast political system,
like Athens and Florence, or the centres of a vast colonial empire,
like Venice and Holland. Moreover, in modern times, the whole
relations and proportions of States have undergone a fundamental
change. Everything is on a larger scale, and there is an almost
general tendency in modern times for all national States to expand and
to absorb into themselves the smaller neighbouring States. It may
almost be said that modern history is made up mainly of the conflicts
between five or six leading States. Contemporary Europe had resulted
in the unstable equilibrium of the five dominant Powers of Britain,
Russia, Austria, France, and Germany. Europe has almost consolidated
into a pentarchy.
XXIII.--THE ANOMALY OF THE SMALL STATE.
If it be true that the national State almost inevitably must develop
into a great Power, conversely it is no less true that small States
are an anomaly. Treitschke never ceased to rail at the monstrosity of
petty States, at what he calls, with supreme contempt, the
"_Kleinstaaterei_." Holland, Denmark, Switzerland, are not really
States. They are only artificial and temporary structures. Holland
will one day be merged into the German Empire and recover its pristine
glory.
The smallness of the State produces a corresponding meanness of
spirit, a narrowness of outlook. Small States are entirely absorbed by
their petty economic interests and party dissensions. They only exist
as the parasites of the larger States, who ensure their prosperity and
security and bear all the brunt of maintaining law and order in
Europe.
But worse even than the small States is the neutral State. A neutral
State in political life is as much a monstrosity as a neutral sexless
animal in the natural world. A State like Belgium is only the parasite
of the larger neighbouring States. Treitschke never mentions Belgium
without an outburst of contempt. The country of Memlinck and van Eyck,
of Rubens and van Dyck, the country whose people in the present war
have borne the first onslaught of all the Teutonic hosts, are never
mentioned by Treitschke except with a sneer.
In no other part of his political system does Treitschke show more
sublime disregard of all those political facts which do not fit in
with his theories. No other part more conclusively proves how the
tyrannical dogma of Prussian nationalism can blind even a profound and
clear-sighted thinker to the most vital historical realities. It must
be apparent _a priori_ to any student of politics that the life of
small communities must gain in concentration and intensity what it
loses in scope and extent. And it must be obvious that small States
have played a much more conspicuous part than the most powerful
empires. The city of Dante, Machiavelli, Michael Angelo, has done more
for culture than all the might and majesty of the Hohenzollern.
Humanity is indebted to one small State--Palestine--for its religion.
To another small State--Greece--humanity owes the beginning of all art
and the foundations of politics. To other small States--Holland and
Scotland--modern Europe is indebted for its political freedom. And are
not the German people themselves indebted for the glories of their
literature to the contemptible cities of Jena and Weimar?
XXIV.
We have explained the main tenets of the Treitschkean creed. Even
after this exhaustive analysis it will be difficult for an English
reader to understand how such a system, if we divest it of its
rhetoric, of its fervid and impassioned style, and of a wealth of
historical illustration, which has been able to ransack every country
and every age, could ever have inspired a policy and could have
hypnotized so completely a highly intelligent and gifted race.
Our incomprehension is partly due to that strange disbelief in the
power of ideas to which we already referred, which remains such a
marked trait of the British people, even as it was a marked trait of
the Roman people, and which is perhaps characteristic of all nations
who are pre-eminent in action, in colonization and empire-building.
This disbelief partly explains why we have revealed such strange
impotence in fighting our spiritual battles. Our Churches have
remained silent and inarticulate. Our statesmen have seldom risen
above sentimental platitudes. No trumpet voice has vindicated our
ideas to the world. Our writers, with a few notable exceptions, such
as Mr. Gilbert Chesterton and Mr. Wells, have seldom risen above trite
truisms. This war has not even produced a masterpiece such as Burke's
"Thoughts on the French Revolution."
But our incomprehension is due even more to our ignorance of the
strange and devious workings of the German mind. Even to-day few
authors understand the reasons which render the German people so
responsive and so docile to the most extravagant doctrines and
systems. The British are a political people; and a political people
only accepts theories in so far as they can be verified, interpreted,
and corrected by experience, only in so far as they can be tested by
the fire of discussion. The German people, as even Prince von Bülow is
compelled to admit, have remained an essentially unpolitical people. They
still are under the yoke of countless princelings. There still exist
sovereign potentates of Lippe and Waldeck, of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen
and Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. The Germans have acquired none of the
habits and traditions of free government. But, most important of all,
their religion has acted in the same direction as their politics. They
are described by Treitschke as the typical Protestant nation; but the
misfortune of German Protestantism has been that it has never
"protested." Through the fusion and confusion of Church and State the
Germans have sold their spiritual birthright for a mess of pottage.
Their spiritual life has been almost entirely divorced from action. It
has been centred in the intellect and in the emotions. It has moved in
a world of abstraction and dreams.
And thus both their politics and their religion have made them a prey
to visionaries and sentimentalists, to unscrupulous journalists like
Harden and Reventlow, to unbalanced poets like Nietzsche, to political
professors, and to fanatic doctrinaires. Of those academic politicians
and fanatic doctrinaires, Treitschke has probably been the most
dangerous and the most illustrious representative. He will ever
remain a memorable example of the power for evil which may be wielded
by a noble and passionate temperament untrained in and unrestrained by
the realities of political life, who sees the State from the altitude
of the professional tripod. The war will have helped to break the
spell of the political professor, but the spell will continue to act
until all the spiritual forces of Germany, until the Press and the
Universities and the Churches, are emancipated from the intrusion of
the State, until the German democracy reveals both the spirit and
conquers the power to achieve its own salvation.
IV.--GENERAL VON BERNHARDI.[15]
[15] These pages were published in 1912.
As a rule the deliberate military policy of a nation remains the
secret of diplomacy and the afterthought of statecraft. As for the
military feeling and the military spirit, so far as they exist amongst
the people, they generally remain subconscious, unreasoned, and
instinctive. It is therefore a piece of rare good fortune to the
student of contemporary history when the designs of statesmen are
carefully thought out and revealed by one who has authority to speak,
and when the instinct of the masses is explained and made explicit by
one who has the gift of lucid statement, of philosophical
interpretation, and psychological insight. It is precisely those
qualities and characteristics that give importance and significance to
the recent book of General von Bernhardi on "Germany and the Coming
War." The author is a distinguished representative of that Prussian
Junkerthum which forms the mainstay of the military party and which
rules the German Empire. He therefore speaks from the inside. And his
previous works have earned him a high reputation as an exponent of the
science of war, and have worthily maintained the traditions of
Clausewitz and von der Goltz. Nor are these the only qualifications of
the author. General von Bernhardi's new book possesses other qualities
which entitle him to a respectful hearing. He writes with absolute
candour and sincerity; his tone is unexceptionable; he is earnest and
dignified; he is moderate and temperate; he is judicial rather than
controversial. Although the author believes, of course, that Germany
stands in the forefront of civilization and has a monopoly of the
highest culture, yet his book is singularly free from the one great
blemish which defaces most German books on international
politics--namely, systematic depreciation of the foreigner. Von
Bernhardi does not assume that France is played out or that England is
effete. He is too well read in military history not to realize that to
belittle the strength or malign the character of an enemy is one of
the most fruitful causes of disaster.
Altogether we could not have a better guide to the study of the
present international situation from the purely German point of view,
nor could we find another book which gives us more undisguisedly the
"mentality," the prejudices and prejudgments and opinions of the
ruling classes. And it is a characteristically German trait that no
less than one-third of the work should be given to the philosophy and
ethics of the subject. General von Bernhardi surveys the field from
the vantage-ground of first principles, and his book is a convincing
proof of a truth which we have expressed elsewhere that in Prussia war
is not looked upon as an accident, but as a law of nature; and not
only as a law of nature, but as the law of man, or if not as the law
of man, certainly as the law of the "German superman." It is not
enough to say that war has been the national industry of Prussia. It
forms an essential part of the philosophy of life, the _Weltanschauung_
of every patriotic Prussian. Bernhardi believes in the morality, one
might almost say in the sanctity, of war. To him war is not a
necessary evil, but, on the contrary, the source of every moral good.
To him it is pacificism which is an immoral doctrine, because it is
the doctrine of the materialist, who believes that enjoyment is the
chief end of life. It is the militarist who is the true idealist
because he assumes that humanity can only achieve its mission through
struggle and strife, through sacrifice and heroism. It is true that
Bernhardi ignores the greatest of Prussian philosophers, whose
immortal plea in favour of perpetual peace is dismissed as the work of
his dotage. But if he dismisses Kant, he adduces instead a formidable
array of thinkers and poets in support of his militarist thesis;
Schiller and Goethe, Hegel and Heraclitus, in turn are summoned as
authorities. Even the Gospels are distorted to convey a militarist
meaning, for the author quotes them to remind us that it is the
warlike and not the meek that shall inherit the earth. But Bernhardi's
chief authorities are the historian of the super-race, the Anglophobe
Treitschke, and the philosopher of the superman, Nietzsche. Nine out
of ten quotations are taken from the political treatises of the
famous Berlin professor, and the whole spirit of Bernhardi's book is
summed up in the motto borrowed from Zarathustra and inscribed on the
front page of the volume:
"War and courage have achieved more great things than the love of our
neighbour. It is not your sympathy, but your bravery, which has
hitherto saved the shipwrecked of existence.
"'What is good?' you ask. To be brave is good."[16]
[16] Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra," First Part, 10th
Speech.
It is no less characteristic of contemporary German political
philosophy that from beginning to end Bernhardi maintains consciously,
deliberately, a purely national attitude, and that he does not even
attempt to rise to a higher and wider point of view. Indeed, the main
issue and cardinal problem, the relation of nationality to humanity,
the conflict between the duties we owe to the one and the duties we
owe to the other, is contemptuously relegated to a footnote (p. 19).
To Bernhardi a nation is not a means to an end, a necessary organ of
universal humanity, and therefore subordinate to humanity. A nation is
an end in itself. It is the ultimate reality. And the preservation and
the increase of the power of the State is the ultimate criterion of
all right. "My country, right or wrong," is the General's whole system
of moral philosophy. Yet, curiously enough, Bernhardi speaks of
Germany as the apostle, not only of a national culture, but of
universal culture, as the champion of civilization, and he indulges in
the usual platitudes on this fertile subject. And he does not even
realize that in so doing he is guilty of a glaring contradiction; he
does not realize that once he adopts this standpoint of universal
culture, he introduces an argument and assumes a position which are
above and outside nationalism. For either the German nation is
self-sufficient, and all culture is centred in and absorbed in
Germany, in which case Prussian nationalism would be historically and
philosophically justified; or culture is something higher and more
comprehensive and less exclusive, in which case national aims must be
estimated and appraised with reference to a higher aim, and a national
policy must be judged according as it furthers or runs counter to the
universal ideals of humanity.
General von Bernhardi starts his survey of the international situation
with the axiom that Germany imperatively wants new markets for her
industry and new territory for her sixty-five millions of people. In
so doing, he only reiterates the usual assumption of German political
writers. And he also resembles the majority of his fellow-publicists
in this respect, that he does not tell us what exactly are the
territories that Germany covets, or how they are to be obtained, or
how the possession of tropical or subtropical colonies can solve the
problem of her population. But he differs from his predecessors in
that he clearly realizes and expresses, without ambiguity or
equivocation, that the assertion of her claims must involve the
establishment of German supremacy, and he admits that those claims are
incompatible with the antiquated doctrine of the balance of power.
And von Bernhardi also clearly realizes that, as other nations will
refuse to accept German supremacy and to surrender those fertile
territories which Germany needs, German expansion can only be achieved
as the result of a conflict--briefly, that war is unavoidable and
inevitable.