we may be attacked by France, for then there would be reasonable
prospect that Russia for a time would remain neutral.... But we must
not hope to bring about this attack by waiting passively. Neither
France, nor Russia, nor England need to attack in order to further
their interests.... If we wish to bring about an attack by our
opponents, we must initiate an active policy which, without attacking
France, will so prejudice her interests or those of England, that both
these States would feel themselves compelled to attack us.
Opportunities for such procedure are offered both in Africa and in
Europe.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 280.
372. When an unconscientious speculator is telling lies upon the Stock
Exchange he is thinking only of his own profit, but when a diplomat is
guilty of obscuring facts in a diplomatic negotiation he is thinking
of his country.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol i., p. 91.
373. It is natural, and within certain limits, politically a matter of
course, that the German Emperor should have thought that, until
Germany had a strong fleet, we must try to keep on good terms with
England, and even, on occasion, to make concessions.--GRAF E. V.
REVENTLOW, D.A.P., p. 60.
374. No State can pledge its future to another. It knows no arbiter,
and draws up all its treaties with this implied reservation....
Moreover, every sovereign State has the undoubted right to declare war
at its pleasure, and is consequently entitled to repudiate its
treaties.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, p. i., 28.
375. The question of alliances in war is always an open one, for
circumstances may at any moment arise such as Bismarck referred to
when he said: "No power is bound [or, we will add, entitled][37] to
sacrifice important interests of its own on the altar of faithfulness
to an alliance!"--GRAF E. v. REVENTLOW, D.A.P., p. 22.
376. It was a most serious mistake in German policy that a final
settling of accounts with France was not effected at a time when the
state of international affairs was favourable and success might
confidently have been expected.... This policy somewhat resembles the
supineness for which England has herself to blame, when she refused
her assistance to the Southern States in the American War of
Secession.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 239.
377. Since England committed the unpardonable blunder, from her point
of view, of not supporting the Southern States in the American War of
Secession, a rival to England's world-wide Empire has appeared on the
other side of the Atlantic.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 95.
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
378. Perhaps the greatest danger for us Germans--greatest because it
does not threaten us from without, but within our own hearts--is our
magnanimity. O, there is something glorious about this virtue, and we
Germans may be quite particularly proud of possessing it.... But woe
to the people which does not stand as one man behind the statesman
who, by dint of hard struggles with his own soul, has fought his way
to the only true standpoint--namely, that _in international relations
magnanimity is wholly out of place_, and that here the voice of
expediency can alone be heard.--EIN DEUTSCHER, W.K.B.M., p. 12.
379. Through our policy of peace ... we deprive ourselves of the right
of determining the time for bringing about a decision by force of
arms, as Bismarck did in three wars, in which, thanks to his
diplomatic adroitness, he forced upon his adversaries the outward
appearance of declaring war, while in reality Prussia-Germany was the
assailant. Bismarck is quoted in Germany as having discouraged
preventive wars.... But we must not forget that the three great wars
which Bismarck waged were in fact preventive. Even in 1870 the
outbreak of war might have been stayed. It was only the brilliant
manipulation (_geniale Fassung_) of the Ems telegram that put France
in the wrong and drove her into war, just as Bismarck had
foreseen.--K. v. STRANTZ, E.S.V., p. 38.
380. For the will of the State, no other principle exists but that of
_expediency_ (_Zweckmässigkeit_), which is at the same time
_selfishness_; not, however, the short-sighted selfishness commended by
Machiavelli, but _far-seeing, shrewdly-calculating_ selfishness.--EIN
DEUTSCHER, W.K.B.M., p. 11.
381. Far-seeing selfishness does not exclude the endeavour to win the
confidence of other nations, which can be won only by honesty. _But
this honesty, at any rate on vital questions, ought on no account to
be carried to the pitch of inexpedient Quixotism._ EIN DEUTSCHER,
W.K.B.M., p. 11.
382. War was in our eyes the most honourable and the holiest means of
awakening the people from its dazed condition. Whether this war came
as an aggressive or as a defensive war was, in principle, a matter of
indifference. That it came to us in the form of a war of defence was
one of those historical strokes of luck which God vouchsafes to those
peoples whom He loves. The time has not yet come to enquire whether
the leaders of German foreign policy took deliberate measures to place
us in the attitude of defence which the masses always regard as more
moral. It may perhaps be so; but it is far from impossible that the
disinclination for war which placed certain high dignitaries of the
German Empire in constant opposition to the will of the people may
have so far imposed upon our adversaries as to induce them to attack
us.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 9.
383. Treaties under international law are no more than _the formulated
expression of the existent relations of power between States_. If
these relations of power have so far changed that the real or
imaginary vital interests of one of the States demand and render
possible the alteration of such treaties, it is the simple duty of the
leader of that State to effect the alteration by all conceivable
means, so long as the risk does not appear greater than the
anticipated advantage.--EIN DEUTSCHER, W.K.B.M., p. 7.
=Might is Right.=
(BEFORE THE WAR.)
384. The law of the strong holds good everywhere.--GENERAL V.
BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 18.
385. What does right matter to me? I have no need of it. What I can
acquire by force, that I possess and enjoy; what I cannot obtain, I
renounce, and I set up no pretensions to indefeasible right.... I have
the right to do what I have the power to do.--M. STIRNER, D.E.S.E., p.
275.
386. Might is the supreme right, and the dispute as to what is right
is decided by the arbitrament of war. War gives a biologically just
decision.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 23.
387. Let it not be said that every people has a right to its existence
(_Bestand_), its speech, &c. By making play with this principle, one
may put on a cheap appearance of civilization, but only so long as the
people in question ... does not stand in the way of any more powerful
people.--J.L. REIMER, E.P.D., p. 129.
388. It is a persistent struggle for possessions, power and
sovereignty that primarily governs the relations of one nation to
another, and right is respected so far only as it is compatible with
advantage.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 19.
389. The earth is constantly being divided anew among the strong and
powerful. The smaller peoples disappear; they are necessarily absorbed
by their larger neighbours.--PROF. E. HASSE, D.G., p. 169.
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
390. It is a base calumny to attribute to us the brutal principle that
might is equivalent to right.--PROF. F. MEINECKE, D.R.S.Z., No. 29,
p. 23.
391. In the age of the most tremendous mobilization of physical and
spiritual forces the world has ever seen, we proclaim--no, we do not
proclaim it, but it reveals itself--the Religion of Strength.--PROF.
A. DEISSMANN, D.R.S.Z., No. 9, p. 24.
_See also Nos. 84, 499._
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Frederick the Great's principle was: "When kings want war they
begin it, and leave learned professors to come after and prove that it
was just."
[36] In other words, Bismarck always told the truth when it was
absolutely convenient.
[37] Reventlow's interpolation.
VI
ENGLAND, FRANCE & BELGIUM--ESPECIALLY ENGLAND
VI
ENGLAND, FRANCE & BELGIUM--ESPECIALLY ENGLAND
=The False Islanders.=
(BEFORE THE WAR.)
392. The climate, the want of wine, and lack of beautiful scenery,
have all been obstacles in the way of English Kultur. H. V.
TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p. 222.
393. The English nationalism is also cosmopolitanism: the service of
his own nation appears to the Englishman the service of mankind. For
he regards his own nation as the mistress of the highest
Kultur-treasures, to which other nations look up in order to admire
and imitate. Thus Anglification is identified with the furtherance of
human Kultur.--G. v. SCHULZE-GAEVERNITZ, B.I., p. 49.
394. England's strength resides in arrogant self-esteem, Germany's
greatness in the modest appreciation of everything foreign. England
is self-seeking to the point of insanity, Germany is just even to
self-depreciation.--TH. FONTANE (about 1854), E.B., p. 389.
395. At the time of the illness of the Emperor Frederick, Treitschke,
at the end of a long speech, summed up his sentiments in these words:
"It must come to this that no German dog shall for evermore accept a
piece of bread from the hand of an Englishman." These words, uttered
in an outburst of passion, aroused no mirth, but went to the heart of
the audience.--E.B., p. 395.
396. After the Boer War, Wildenbruch was done with England.... She was
dead for him, and erased from the Book of Life. All the contempt which
now leads us to raise, not the sword, but the whip, against that
abortion compounded of low greed and shameless hypocrisy, he then
screamed out to the world in words which we could not even to-day make
bitterer or more scathing.--PROF. B. LITZMANN, D.R.S.Z., No. 12, p. 13.
397. It is just as Schleiermacher said a hundred years ago: "These
false islanders, wrongly admired by many, have no other watchword but
gain and enjoyment. They are never in earnest about anything that
transcends practical utility."--PASTOR M. HENNIG, D.K.U.W., p. 37.
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
=Hymns of Hate.=
398. The war has laid bare the British soul, and a cold shudder goes
through the Germanic Kultur-world.--"GERMANUS," B.U.D.K., p. 52.
398a. A hundred times more glowing than our steel, shall the mark of
our contempt be branded upon thee. Wander thou as a lonely Ahasuerus,
restless and unhappy, over land and sea. And if thou sayest, "I have
flung the firebrand of hell from earth to heaven, over sea and land, I
have struck God and mankind in the face, and must now bear all their
curses, an everlasting stigma seared with fire," then shalt thou speak
the truth for the first time.--OTTO RIEMASCH, quoted in H.A.H., p. 49.
399. No people has done so much harm to civilization as the
English.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 122.
400. King William I. issued on August 11, 1870, a proclamation to the
effect that "Germany made war only against the armies of the enemy,
not against the civil population."... There can be no doubt that, in
the case of an eventual landing in England, the proclamation of the
Emperor William II. to the English people would be couched in very
different terms from those in which King William I. addressed the
people of France.--A HAMBURG MERCHANT, E.S.S.H., pp. 8, 10.
401. England has nothing but the instincts of a beast of prey. This
alone can explain her foreign and domestic policy of the past decades.
Her one object has been to increase her outward possessions and to let
her own people starve.--K.L.A. SCHMIDT, D.E.E., p. 6.
401a. We willingly leave to the Britons their "freedom." It is nothing
but the freedom of the English aristocracy to impose its will on the
English people. It is the freedom of individuals, bought with the
misery of millions and with the blood of hirelings.--PROF. W. V.
BLUME, D.D.M., p. 21.
_But see No. 432, on the disgusting "comfort" of the British workman._
402. We need not be ashamed of our hatred [for England]. It is rooted
in our love for our innocently suffering fellow-countrymen. This
sanctifies it. The Gospel does not say, "If any one strikes thy child
on the right cheek, turn to him also the left cheek of thy child," It
speaks only of one's own cheek. But it also speaks of the hell-fire of
which the offender stands in danger.--PROF. R. LEONHARD, D.R.S.Z.,
No. 16.
403. Our war expenses will be paid by the vanquished. The
black-white-red flag shall float over all seas.... The whole world
shall stand open to us, to develop the energy of the German nature in
unhampered competition.... We must break the tyranny which England, in
base self-seeking and shameless contempt of law, exercises over the
seas.--PROF. O. v. GIERKE, D.R.S.Z., No. 2, p. 23.
404. It is high time to shake off the illusion that there is any moral
law, or any historical consideration, that imposes upon us any sort of
restraint with regard to England. Only absolute ruthlessness makes any
impression on the Englishman; anything else he regards as weakness....
_A corsaire, corsaire et demi!_--PROF. O. FLAMM, E.B., p. 400.
405. That foreign Kulturs offer us things of spiritual value, whether
it be for our enjoyment or by way of a challenge, is true--always, of
course, with the exception of England, which does not produce anything
of spiritual value.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 137.
406. Our real fight is against England, the master of calculation. The
miraculous fights against the commonplace, German spirit against
English shrewdness, imperturbable heroism against crafty statesmanship.
Even those people who now think that they are fighting in the name of
civilization against us barbarians, will shortly discover their
mistake, and recognize the German miracle which has come to save the
world from the spirit of calculating rationalism.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ,
D.W.D., p. 105.
407. It is certain that the present generation of continental Europe,
which has been for fifteen months a daily witness of Great Britain's
_barbarous_ and infamous conduct of the war--the unexampled massacres,
the shameless political falsity and hypocrisy, the cowardly
ill-treatment of prisoners and wounded!--cannot possibly make any move
towards reconciliation.--PROF. E. HAECKEL, E.W., p. 113.
408. Hastily, and just at the time appointed for the murder of Franz
Ferdinand, a friendly visit of battleships to Kiel is arranged[38]--for
the other attempts to spy out the harbour had failed.--H.S.
CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 67.
408a. We have now ascertained that the plan for the assassination of
the Austrian Crown-Prince was known in the Serbian Legation in London,
and we shall certainly soon learn that it was known in other places as
well.--K.L.A. SCHMIDT, D.E.E., p. 7.
409. That the blood-guiltiness of this "greatest crime in
world-history" lies at the door of _England alone_ and that she has
for more than forty years been plotting the _annihilation_ of her
dangerous German competitor, has been established by numerous facts
... and, during the past three months, by the naïve admissions of
English statesmen.--PROF. E. HAECKEL, E.W., p. 113.
410. It is a pity that Nietzsche did not live to see the success of
his teaching in England.... Britain may claim to have bred the
Superman in the highest potency yet attained. He has made a clean
sweep of the old British morality. He is coldly and unfeelingly
inspired by a _frightful craving for power_, that wades through
rivers of blood, and knows neither compunction nor pity. These are
weaknesses which the Superman has conquered.--"GERMANUS," B.U.D.K.,
p. 9.
_But see No. 132._
411. It is a pity that men like Newton, Darwin, Shakespeare,
Marlborough, Nelson, Wellington, Spurgeon, etc., should have their
birth recorded in British registers. But they are exceptions. Among
the millions of the Cities of the Plain, there must be a few just
men.--PASTOR B. LÖSCHE, D.S.E.S.D., p. 15.
411a. Death and destruction to the poison-mixers on the banks of the
Thames! Cain, Ahab, Judas, Ephialtes, and the disciples of these
master-assassins, whatever they may be called, are positive heroes in
comparison with the ruffians who, jeering at all Kultur, have
committed a crime against innocent blood which no words can
characterize.--PASTOR B. LÖSCHE,[39] D.S.E.S.D., p. 4.
412. The unexampled sorrow and need begotten by the gigantic world-war
conjured up by England's brutal egoism--"_the greatest crime in the
whole world-history_"--has inclined many suffering people to
suicide.--PROF. E. HAECKEL, E.W., p. 39.
413. [Title.] "The Greatest Criminal against Humanity of the Twentieth
Century, KING EDWARD VII. OF ENGLAND. A Curse Pamphlet
(_Fluchschrift_),[40] by Lieutenant-Colonel Reinhold Wagner." He it
was, he it was that kindled the world-war. He was the incarnation of
the boundless selfishness and unscrupulousness of Englishism
(_Engländertum_). Opening words of above-cited pamphlet.
414. White snow, white snow, fall, fall for seven weeks; all may'st
thou cover, far and wide, but never England's shame; white snow, white
snow, never the sins of England.--G. FALCK, quoted in H.A.H., p. 50.
=British Vices--Hypocrisy, Envy and Greed.=
415. England thinks the hour has come for our annihilation. Why does
she want to annihilate us? Because she cannot forgive our strength,
our industry, our prosperity! There is no other explanation![41]--PROF.
A. v. HARNACK, I.M., 1st October, 1914, p. 25.
416. No other people has misused its riches as England has. With a
hypocritically virtuous air, the British Chauvinist has for years been
labouring to undermine the German name, and few can have divined with
what means he went to work.--"GERMANUS," B.U.D.K., p. 47.
417. We cannot expect our enemies to try to do us justice--though we
can, after all, sympathetically understand almost all of them, with
the sole exception of the English, in whom the transparently base
abstractness of the calculating business spirit lies beneath the level
of humanity, and is so positively immoral as to be entirely outside
the scope of sympathy.--G. MISCH, V.G.D.K., p. 8.
418. And then England! She does not, like France, send all her sons
into the field, but sends specially enlisted troops. There lurks the
impelling evil spirit, which has conjured up this war out of hell--the
spirit of envy and the spirit of hypocrisy.--PROF. U. V.
WILAMOWITZ-MÖLLENDORF, R., pt. i., p. 7.
419. England is a Moloch that will devour everything, a vampire that
will suck tribute from all the veins of the earth, a monster snake
encircling the whole Equator.--"My German Fatherland," by PASTOR
TOLZIEN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 140.
420. In the last attempt at an Anglo-Saxon philosophy, Pragmatism, the
test of truth became simply usefulness. It is true that most
Englishmen turned against it. Why? Not because this view seemed to
them false, but because they thought it inadvisable, and therefore
sinful, to blurt out the secret.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 121.
421. An English poet has invented a symbol that may well be applied to
his own country: _The Picture of Dorian Grey._ In the eyes of the
world, the hypocritical sinner seems to be endowed with the gift of
unfading youth and beauty; but only because he has at home a
sedulously concealed portrait of magical properties. In this the vices
plough their furrows; in this the features are gradually contorted
into a grisly image of guilt; until the day of judgment--the day of
self-judgment.--PROF. U. v. WILAMOWITZ-MÖLLENDORF, R., pt. iv., p. 16.
422. Oscar Wilde once wrote an essay on _The Art of Lying_, and his
countrymen have since carried this art to a high perfection.--H. S.
CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 10.
422a. Another vice has been developed to its highest pitch in this
war: to wit, _lying_. England in particular has established a record
in this department, even as against the Father of Lies, the
Devil.--PROF. F. DELITZSCH, D.R.S.Z., No. 13, p. 20.
422b. Never since human Kultur has existed has such a _deluge of lies
and slanders_, of fraud and hypocrisy, been poured forth as ...
"pious" England has spread abroad in the name of the triune Christian
God. And this shameless hypocrisy must appear all the more revolting,
since every one who is at all behind the scenes knows that this
British _Christian God_ is in truth the _Bank of England_, the sacred
"_Golden Calf_," the idolatrous worship of which is the chief aim of
_Pambritismus_, the lordship of England over all other peoples.--PROF.
E. HAECKEL, E.W., p. 59.
423. We _must_ be wroth, and we _will_ be wroth, with the whole power
of our inner man. We will hate the will of the nation which has so
basely set upon our peace-loving people in order to destroy us. We
will hate the Satanic powers of arrogance and selfishness, of
treachery and cruelty, of lying and hypocrisy. We will fight without
scruple, and employ all means of destruction, however terrible they
may be. We cannot do otherwise; but we do not hate the individual
human beings.... The true, beneficent hatred applies to things, not
persons.--_The Fifth Petition in the Lord's Prayer and England_, by
PASTOR J. LAHUSEN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 162.
423a. The curse of millions of hapless people falls on the head of the
British island kingdom, whose boundless national egoism knows no other
goal than the extension of British rule over the whole planet, the
exploitation of all other nations to its own benefit, and the filling
of its insatiable purse with the gold of all other peoples.--PROF. E.
HAECKEL, quoted by P. HEINSICK, W.U.G., p. 4.
424. It is an almost sinister self-contradiction: the individual
Englishman, in private life, is by no means devoid of a certain
outward decency, perhaps because he thinks it pays: but the public
morals of England do not shrink from any baseness.--PROF. G. ROETHE,
D.R.S.Z., No. 1, p. 14.
425. It is certain that it was in England that humanity first fell
sick of the huckster view of the world. But the English ailment had
spread further, and above all it had already begun to attack the body
of even the German people.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 99.
425a. Covetousness, a huckstering spirit, a thirst for gain,
calculating envy, hypocrisy--what despicable vices have they not
become to us. We spit at them, we hate them, just because they are
British.... Now we walk in gentle innocence through homely pastures,
free from greed of money, stripped of all cunning, because--just
because it is all British.--PASTOR D. VORWERK, quoted in H.A.H., p. 39.
426. The much-lauded missionary spirit was only a business enterprise,
by means of which John Bull filled his purse.--"The Christianity of
the Belligerent Nations," by PASTOR ERDMANN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 146.
427. England avers that she makes war against us without hatred, and
thinks she is thereby giving proof of high civilization. It is
precisely the proof of her cold-hearted baseness.... The
self-controlled English gentleman, who makes unemotional war out of
commercial envy, is more devilish than the Cossack. He stands to the
Frenchman in the relation of the sneaking murderer for gain to the
murderer from passion. The gentleman-burglar of Conan Doyle expresses
the soul of the nation.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 15.
428. A nice protector of outraged national rights!!! Thus Richard,
Duke of Gloucester, appears with prayer-book and rosary on the terrace
of the castle, thus Mephistopheles dons the mask of lawyer and
philosopher, thus Iscariot kisses the Saviour.--"My German
Fatherland," by PASTOR TOLZIEN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 142.
429. Never has the _mass-misery of war_ ... presented itself to us in
such grisly shapes as in this terrible world-war, which has been
forced upon us _solely_ by the commercial envy and the _brutal egoism_
of the Christian model-state, _England_.--PROF. E. HAECKEL, E.W., p. 27.
=British Vices--Cowardice and Laziness.=
430. It is the English who may justly be accused of militarism--the
people who, in addition to Irish and Scottish hirelings (they
themselves, as a rule, prefer to remain at home) place Hindus and
Indian mountaineers in the field.--PROF. W. WUNDT, D.N.I.P., p. 143.