FREDERICK THE GREAT: THE FATHER OF PRUSSIAN MILITARISM
I.
Amongst the many discoveries brought about by the war of the nations,
an educated British public has suddenly discovered the unsuspected
existence of Heinrich von Treitschke. And not only have we discovered
the national Prussian historian--we have also unwittingly discovered
Prussian history. We have certainly had revealed to us for the first
time its secret and hidden meaning. We are only just beginning to
realize that for nearly two hundred years it is Prussia, and not
Russia, which has been the evil influence in European politics.
Prussia has not been a natural political growth. She has been an
artificial creation of statesmen. She has been pre-eminently the
predatory State. She has never taken the sword to defend a
disinterested idea. The ravisher of Silesia, of Schleswig-Holstein, of
Alsace-Lorraine, the murderer of Poland, she has never expanded except
at the expense of her neighbours. She has corrupted the German soul;
she has been the mainstay of reaction and militarism in Central
Europe. She has been the bond of that freemasonry of despotism, of
that Triple Alliance of the three empires which subsisted until the
fall of Bismarck, which has been for generations the nightmare of
European Liberals.
II.
In attempting to reread modern history in the light of that new
interpretation of Prussian history, we are naturally driven to ask
ourselves who is primarily responsible for that sinister influence
which Prussia has exercised for the last two centuries. To the
unprejudiced student there can be no doubt that the one man primarily
responsible is Frederick the Great, the master-builder of Prussian
militarism and Prussian statecraft. He it is who has been poisoning
the wells; he it is who first conceived of the State as a barracks; he
it is who has "Potsdamized" the Continent and transformed Europe into
a military camp. Strangely enough, all civilized nations to-day have
proclaimed Prussia accursed. Yet we continue to hero-worship the man
who made Prussia what she is. A halo still surrounds the
Mephistophelian figure which incarnates the Hohenzollern spirit. A
legend has gathered round the philosopher of Sans Souci. A combination
of circumstances has caused writers almost unanimously to extol his
merits and to ignore his crimes. British historians naturally favour
the ally of the Seven Years' War. Russian and Austrian writers are
indulgent to the accomplice of the partition of Poland. Anti-clerical
writers glorify the Atheist. Military writers extol the soldier.
Political writers extol the statesman. But the most adequate
explanation of the Frederician legend is the circumstance that public
opinion has been systematically mobilized in favour of Frederick the
Great by the great French leaders of the eighteenth century, the
dispensers of European fame.
It was not for nothing that Frederick the Great for forty years
courted the good graces of Voltaire d'Alembert. He knew full well that
Voltaire would prove to him a most admirable publicity agent. And
never was publicity agent secured at a lower cost. Those literary
influences have continued to our own day to perpetuate the legend of
Frederick. Nearly a hundred years after Rossbach Frederick had the
strange good fortune to captivate the wayward genius of Carlyle. It is
difficult to understand how Carlyle, who all through life hesitated
between the Christian Puritanism of John Knox and the Olympian
paganism of Goethe, could have been fascinated by the Potsdam cynic.
We can only seek for an explanation in the deeply rooted anti-French
and pro-German prejudices of Carlyle. Frederick was the arch-enemy of
France, and that fact was sufficient to attract the sympathies of
Teufelsdröckh. It is Carlyle's Gallophobia which has inspired one of
the most mischievous masterpieces of English literature.
III.
The conspiracy of European historians has thus attached greatness to
the very name of the third Hohenzollern King. Great the Hohenzollern
King certainly was, but his greatness is that of a Condottiere of the
Italian Renascence, of a Catharine de' Medici. It is the greatness of
a personality who is endowed, no doubt, with magnificent gifts, but
who has prostituted all those gifts to the baser usages.
It is passing strange how every writer remains silent about the ugly
and repellent side of Frederick. The son of a mad father, he was
subjected to a terrorism which would have predestined a less strong
nature to the lunatic asylum. The terrorism only hardened Frederick
into an incurable cynic. It only killed in him every finer feeling.
His upbringing must almost inevitably have brought out all the darker
sides of human nature.
The first twenty years of his life were one uninterrupted schooling in
hypocrisy, brutality, and depravity. A debauchee in his youth, a
sodomite in later life, a hater of women and a despiser of men, a
bully to his subordinates, a monster of ingratitude, revelling in
filth so continuously in his written and spoken words that even a
loyal Academy of Berlin has found it impossible to publish his
unexpurgated correspondence, he appears an anachronism in a modern
Europe leavened by two thousand years of Christianity. Ever scheming,
ever plotting, ever seeking whom he might devour, deceiving even his
intimate advisers, he has debased the currency of international
morality. As a man Frederick has been compared with Napoleon. The
comparison is an insult to the Corsican. Napoleon was human, he was
capable of strong affections, of profound attachment and gratitude.
But neither friendship nor love had any place in Frederick's scheme of
the universe.
IV.
To-day we are holding the poor Prussian professor mainly accountable
for the greatest and latest crime of Prussian militarism. But those
dogmatic professors are only the abject disciples of the Hohenzollern
King. There is not one aphorism which is not to be found in the thirty
volumes of Frederick's writings. He has perfected the theory of the
military State, and he has acted consistently on the theory. It is
highly significant that his very first public act, almost never
mentioned by his biographers, was his spoliation of the Prince-Bishop
of Liége (an historical precedent tragically suggestive at the present
day). The Prince-Bishop of Liége had committed the heinous crime of
resisting the impressment of his subjects kidnapped by the recruiting
sergeants of the Prussian King. On the strength of that theory,
Frederick attacked the defenceless daughter of the Austrian Emperor
who had saved his life at Custrin. On the strength of that theory he
betrayed every one of his allies. On the strength of that theory he
committed his most odious crime--he murdered the Polish nation.
V.
We are told that Frederick the Great was an incomparable political
virtuoso. We are told that he showed heroic fortitude in disaster,
after Kollin and Kunersdorff. But so did Cæsar Borgia after the sudden
death of Alexander VI. We are told that he was tolerant of all creeds.
But that was only because he disbelieved all creeds, and he believed,
with Gibbon, that "all creeds are equally useful to the statesman." We
are reminded that he was an amazing economist, husbanding and
developing the national finances. But his finances were only the
sinews of war. We are told that he protected literature and art, but,
like religion, he found literature an instrument useful for his
political designs. We are reminded that he was himself the servant of
the State. But in serving the State he only served his own interests,
because the State was incarnated in himself, and in husbanding his
resources he was only acting like a miser who is adding to his hoard.
We are finally told that as the result of his life-work Frederick
succeeded in creating the most marvellous military machine of modern
times. We forget that, as is the way with most military machines, the
Prussian machine ten years after Frederick's death had become a
pitiful wreck in the hands of his immediate successor, and that it
required the genius of Bismarck to manufacture another Prussian
military machine to be used once more for the enslavement of Europe.