THE ARMY AND POPULAR EDUCATION
The policy of peace and restraint has brought us to a position in which
we can only assert our place among the Great Powers and secure the
conditions of life for the future by the greatest expenditure of
treasure and, so far as human conjecture can go, of blood. We shall be
compelled, therefore, to adopt, without a moment's delay, special
measures which will enable us to be more or less a match for our
enemies--I mean accelerated ship-building and rapid increase of the
army. We must always bear in mind in the present that we have to provide
for the future.
Apart from the requirements of the moment, we must never forget to
develop the elements on which not only our military strength, but also
the political power of the State ultimately rest. We must maintain the
physical and mental health of the nation, and this can only be done if
we aim at a progressive development of popular education in the widest
sense, corresponding to the external changes in the conditions and
demands of existence.
While it is the duty of the State to guide her citizens to the highest
moral and mental development, on the other hand the elements of
strength, rooted in the people, react upon the efficiency of the State.
Only when supported by the strong, unanimous will of the nation can the
State achieve really great results; she is therefore doubly interested
in promoting the physical and mental growth of the nation. Her duty and
her justification consist in this endeavour, for she draws from the
fulfilment of this duty the strength and capacity to be in the highest
sense true to it.
It is, under present conditions, expedient also from the merely military
standpoint to provide not only for the healthy physical development of
our growing youth, but also to raise its intellectual level. For while
the demands which modern war makes have increased in every direction,
the term of service has been shortened in order to make enlistment in
very great numbers possible. Thus the full consummation of military
training cannot be attained unless recruits enter the army well equipped
physically and mentally, and bringing with them patriotic sentiments
worthy of the honourable profession of arms.
We have already shown in a previous chapter how important it is to raise
the culture of the officers and non-commissioned officers to the best of
our power, in order to secure not only a greater and more independent
individual efficiency, but also a deeper and more lasting influence on
the men; but this influence of the superiors must always remain limited
if it cannot count on finding in the men a receptive and intelligent
material. This fact is especially clear when we grasp the claims which
modern war will make on the individual fighter. In order to meet these
demands fully, the people must be properly educated.
Each individual must, in modern warfare, display a large measure of
independent judgment, calm grasp of the facts, and bold resolution. In
the open methods of fighting, the infantryman, after his appointed duty
has been assigned him, is to a great degree thrown on his own resources;
he may often have to take over the command of his own section if the
losses among his superiors are heavy. The artilleryman will have to work
his gun single-handed when the section leaders and gun captains have
fallen victims to the shrapnel fire; the patrols and despatch-riders are
often left to themselves in the middle of the enemy's country; and the
sapper, who is working against a counter-mine, will often find himself
unexpectedly face to face with the enemy, and has no resource left
beyond his own professional knowledge and determination.
But not only are higher claims made on the independent responsibility of
the individual in modern warfare, but the strain on the physique will
probably be far greater in the future than in previous wars. This change
is due partly to the large size of the armies, partly to the greater
efficiency of the firearms. All movements in large masses are more
exacting in themselves than similar movements in small detachments,
since they are never carried out so smoothly. The shelter and food of
great masses can never be so good as with smaller bodies; the depth of
the marching columns, which increases with the masses, adds to the
difficulties of any movements--abbreviated rest at night, irregular
hours for meals, unusual times for marching, etc. The increased range of
modern firearms extends the actual fighting zone, and, in combination
with the larger fronts, necessitates wide détours whenever the troops
attempt enveloping movements or other changes of position on the
battlefield.
In the face of these higher demands, the amount of work done in the army
has been enormously increased. The State, however, has done little to
prepare our young men better for military service, while tendencies are
making themselves felt in the life of the people which exercise a very
detrimental influence on their education. I specially refer to the
ever-growing encroachments of a social-democratic, anti-patriotic
feeling, and, hand-in-hand with this, the flocking of the population
into the large towns, which is unfavourable to physical development.
This result is clearly shown by the enlistment statistics. At the
present day, out of all the German-born military units, over 6.14 per
cent. come from the large towns, 7.37 per cent, from the medium-sized
towns, 22.34 per cent. from the small or country towns, and 64.15 per
cent. from the rural districts; while the distribution of the population
between town and country is quite different. According to the census of
1905, the rural population amounted to 42.5 per cent., the small or
country towns to 25.5 per cent., the medium-sized towns to 12.9 per
cent., and the large towns to 19.1 per cent. of the entire number of
inhabitants. The proportion has probably changed since that year still
more unfavourably for the rural population, while the large towns have
increased in population. These figures clearly show the physical
deterioration of the town population, and signify a danger to our
national life, not merely in respect of physique, but in the intellect
and compact unity of the nation. The rural population forms part and
parcel of the army. A thousand bonds unite the troops and the families
of their members, so far as they come from the country; everyone who
studies the inner life of our army is aware of this. The interest felt
in the soldier's life is intense. It is the same spirit, transmitted
from one to another. The relation of the army to the population of the
great cities which send a small and ever-diminishing fraction of their
sons into the army is quite different. A certain opposition exists
between the population of the great cities and the country-folk, who,
from a military point of view, form the backbone of the nation.
Similarly, the links between the army and the large towns have loosened,
and large sections of the population in the great cities are absolutely
hostile to the service.
It is in the direct interests of the State to raise the physical health
of the town population by all imaginable means, not only in order to
enable more soldiers to be enlisted, but to bring the beneficial effect
of military training more extensively to bear on the town population,
and so to help to make our social conditions more healthy. Nothing
promotes unity of spirit and sentiment like the comradeship of military
service.
So far as I can judge, it is not factory work alone in itself which
exercises a detrimental effect on the physical development and, owing to
its monotony, on the mental development also, but the general conditions
of life, inseparable from such work, are prejudicial. Apart from many
forms of employment in factories which are directly injurious to health,
the factors which stunt physical development may be found in the housing
conditions, in the pleasure-seeking town life, and in alcoholism. This
latter vice is far more prevalent in the large cities than in the rural
districts, and, in combination with the other influences of the great
city, produces far more harmful results.
It is therefore the unmistakable duty of the State, first, to fight
alcoholism with every weapon, if necessary by relentlessly taxing all
kinds of alcoholic drinks, and by strictly limiting the right to sell
them; secondly, most emphatic encouragement must be given to all efforts
to improve the housing conditions of the working population, and to
withdraw the youth of the towns from the ruinous influences of a life of
amusements. In Munich, Bavarian officers have recently made a
praiseworthy attempt to occupy the leisure time of the young men past
the age of attendance at school with health-producing military
exercises. The young men's clubs which Field-Marshal v.d. Goltz is
trying to establish aim at similar objects. Such undertakings ought to
be vigorously carried out in every large town, and supported by the
State, from purely physical as well as social considerations. The
gymnastic instruction in the schools and gymnastic clubs has an
undoubtedly beneficial effect on physical development, and deserves
every encouragement; finally, on these grounds, as well as all others,
the system of universal service should have been made an effective
reality. It is literally amazing to notice the excellent effect of
military service on the physical development of the recruits. The
authorities in charge of the reserves should have been instructed to
make the population of the great cities serve in larger numbers than
hitherto.
On the other hand, a warning must, in my opinion, be issued against two
tendencies: first, against the continual curtailing of the working hours
for factory hands and artisans; and, secondly, against crediting sport
with an exaggerated value for the national health. As already pointed
out, it is usually not the work itself, but the circumstances attendant
on working together in large numbers that are prejudicial.
The wish to shorten the working hours on principle, except to a moderate
degree, unless any exceptionally unfavourable conditions of work are
present, is, in my opinion, an immoral endeavour, and a complete
miscomprehension of the real value of work. It is in itself the greatest
blessing which man knows, and ill betide the nation which regards it no
longer as a moral duty, but as the necessary means of earning a
livelihood and paying for amusements. Strenuous labour alone produces
men and characters, and those nations who have been compelled to win
their living in a continuous struggle against a rude climate have often
achieved the greatest exploits, and shown the greatest vitality.
So long as the Dutch steeled their strength by unremitting conflict with
the sea, so long as they fought for religious liberty against the
Spanish supremacy, they were a nation of historical importance; now,
when they live mainly for money-making and enjoyment, and lead a
politically neutral existence, without great ambitions or great wars,
their importance has sunk low, and will not rise again until they take a
part in the struggle of the civilized nations. In Germany that stock
which was destined to bring back our country from degradation to
historical importance did not grow up on the fertile banks of the Rhine
or the Danube, but on the sterile sands of the March.
We must preserve the stern, industrious, old-Prussian feeling, and carry
the rest of Germany with us to Kant's conception of life; we must
continuously steel our strength by great political and economic
endeavours, and must not be content with what we have already attained,
or abandon ourselves to the indolent pursuit of pleasure; thus only we
shall remain healthy in mind and body, and able to keep our place in the
world.
Where Nature herself does not compel hard toil, or where with growing
wealth wide sections of the people are inclined to follow a life of
pleasure rather than of work, society and the State must vie in taking
care that work does not become play, or play work. It is work, regarded
as a duty, that forges men, not fanciful play. Sport, which is spreading
more and more amongst us too, must always remain a means of recreation,
not an end in itself, if it is to be justified at all. We must never
forget this. Hard, laborious work has made Germany great; in England, on
the contrary, sport has succeeded in maintaining the physical health of
the nation; but by becoming exaggerated and by usurping the place of
serious work it has greatly injured the English nation. The English
nation, under the influence of growing wealth, a lower standard of
labour efficiency--which, indeed, is the avowed object of the English
trades unions--and of the security of its military position, has more
and more become a nation of gentlemen at ease and of sportsmen, and it
may well be asked whether, under these conditions, England will show
herself competent for the great duties which she has taken on herself in
the future. If, further, the political rivalry with the great and
ambitious republic in America be removed by an Arbitration Treaty, this
circumstance might easily become the boundary-stone where the roads to
progress and to decadence divide, in spite of all sports which develop
physique.
The physical healthiness of a nation has no permanent value, unless it
comes from work and goes hand-in-hand with spiritual development; while,
if the latter is subordinated to material and physical considerations,
the result must be injurious in the long-run.
We must not therefore be content to educate up for the army a physically
healthy set of young men by elevating the social conditions and the
whole method of life of our people, but we must also endeavour to
promote their spiritual development in every way. The means for doing so
is the school. Military education under the present-day conditions,
which are continually becoming more severe, can only realize its aims
satisfactorily if a groundwork has been laid for it in the schools, and
an improved preliminary training has been given to the raw material.
The national school is not sufficient for this requirement. The general
regulations which settle the national school system in Prussia date from
the year 1872, and are thus forty years old, and do not take account of
the modern development which has been so rapid of late years. It is only
natural that a fundamental opposition exists between them and the
essentials of military education. Present-day military education
requires complete individualization and a conscious development of manly
feeling; in the national school everything is based on teaching in
classes, and there is no distinction between the sexes. This is directly
prescribed by the rules.
In the army the recruits are taught under the superintendence of the
superiors by specially detached officers and selected experienced
non-commissioned officers; and even instruction is given them in quite
small sections; while each one receives individual attention from the
non-commissioned officers of his section and the higher superior
officers. In a school, on the contrary, the master is expected to teach
as many as eighty scholars at a time; in a school with two teachers as
many as 120 children are divided into two classes. A separation of the
sexes is only recommended in a school of several classes. As a rule,
therefore, the instruction is given in common. It is certain that, under
such conditions, no insight into the personality of the individual is
possible. All that is achieved is to impart more or less mechanically
and inefficiently a certain amount of information in some branch of
knowledge, without any consideration of the special dispositions of boys
and girls, still less of individuals.
Such a national school can obviously offer no preparation for a military
education. The principles which regulate the teaching in the two places
are quite different. That is seen in the whole tendency of the instruction.
The military education aims at training the moral personality to
independent thought and action, and at the same time rousing patriotic
feelings among the men. Instruction in a sense of duty and in our
national history thus takes a foremost place by the side of professional
teaching. Great attention is given to educate each individual in logical
reasoning and in the clear expression of his thoughts.
In the national school these views are completely relegated to the
background--not, of course, as a matter of intention and theory, but as
the practical result of the conditions. The chief stress in such a
school is laid on formal religious instruction, and on imparting some
facility in reading, writing, and ciphering. The so-called _Realign_
(history, geography, natural history, natural science) fall quite into
the background. Only six out of thirty hours of instruction weekly are
devoted to all the _Realien_ in the middle and upper standards; in the
lower standards they are ignored altogether, while four to five hours
are assigned to religious instruction in every standard. There is no
idea of any deliberate encouragement of patriotism. Not a word in the
General Regulations suggests that any weight is to be attached to this;
and while over two pages are filled with details of the methods of
religious instruction, history, which is especially valuable for the
development of patriotic sentiments, is dismissed in ten lines. As for
influencing the character and the reasoning faculties of the scholars to
any extent worth mentioning, the system of large classes puts it
altogether out of the question.
While the allotment of subjects to the hours available for instruction
is thus very one-sided, the system on which instruction is given,
especially in religious matters, is also unsatisfactory. Beginning with
the lower standard onwards (that is to say, the children of six years),
stories not only from the New Testament, but also from the Old Testament
are drummed into the heads of the scholars. Similarly every Saturday the
portions of Scripture appointed for the next Sunday are read out and
explained to all the children. Instruction in the Catechism begins also
in the lower standard, from the age of six onwards; the children must
learn some twenty hymns by heart, besides various prayers. It is a
significant fact that it has been found necessary expressly to forbid
"the memorizing of the General Confession and other parts of the
liturgical service," as "also the learning by heart of the Pericopes."
On the other hand, the institution of Public Worship is to be explained
to the children. This illustrates the spirit in which this instruction
has to be imparted according to the regulations.
It is really amazing to read these regulations. The object of
Evangelical religious instruction is to introduce the children "to the
comprehension of the Holy Scriptures and to the creed of the
congregation," in order that they "may be enabled to read the Scriptures
independently and to take an active part both in the life and the
religious worship of the congregation." Requirements are laid down which
entirely abandon the task of making the subject suitable to the
comprehension of children from six to fourteen years of age, and
presuppose a range of ideas totally beyond their age. Not a word,
however, suggests that the real meaning of religion--its influence, that
is, on the moral conduct of man--should be adequately brought into
prominence. The teacher is not urged by a single syllable to impress
religious ideas on the receptive child-mind; the whole course of
instruction, in conformity with regulations, deals with a formal
religiosity, which is quite out of touch with practical life, and if not
deliberately, at least in result, renounces any attempt at moral
influence. A real feeling for religion is seldom the fruit of such
instruction; the children, as a rule, are glad after their Confirmation
to have done with this unspiritual religious teaching, and so they
remain, when their schooling is over, permanently strangers to the
religious inner life, which the instruction never awakened in them. Nor
does the instruction for Confirmation do much to alter that, for it is
usually conceived in the same spirit.
All other subjects which might raise heart and spirit and present to the
young minds some high ideals--more especially our own country's
history--are most shamefully neglected in favour of this sort of
instruction; and yet a truly religious and patriotic spirit is of
inestimable value for life, and, above all, for the soldier. It is the
more regrettable that instruction in the national school, as fixed by
the regulations, and as given in practice in a still duller form, is
totally unfitted to raise such feelings, and thus to do some real
service to the country. It is quite refreshing to read in the new
regulations for middle schools of February 10,1910, that by religious
instruction the "moral and religious tendencies of the child" should be
awakened and strengthened, and that the teaching of history should aim
at exciting an "intelligent appreciation of the greatness of the
fatherland."
The method of religious instruction which is adopted in the national
school is, in my opinion, hopelessly perverted. Religious instruction
can only become fruitful and profitable when a certain intellectual
growth has started and the child possesses some conscious will. To make
it the basis of intellectual growth, as was evidently intended in the
national schools, has never been a success; for it ought not to be
directed at the understanding and logical faculties, but at the mystical
intuitions of the soul, and, if it is begun too early, it has a
confusing effect on the development of the mental faculties. Even the
missionary who wishes to achieve real results tries to educate his
pupils by work and secular instruction before he attempts to impart to
them subtle religious ideas. Yet every Saturday the appointed passages
of Scripture (the Pericopes) are explained to six-year-old children.
Religious instruction proper ought to begin in the middle standard. Up
to that point the teacher should be content, from the religious
standpoint, to work on the child's imagination and feelings with the
simplest ideas of the Deity, but in other respects to endeavour to
awaken and encourage the intellectual life, and make it able to grasp
loftier conceptions. The national school stands in total contradiction
to this intellectual development. This is in conformity to regulations,
for the same children who read the Bible independently are only to be
led to "an approximate comprehension of those phenomena which are daily
around them." In the course of eight years they learn a smattering of
reading, writing, and ciphering.[A] It is significant of the knowledge
of our national history which the school imparts that out of sixty-three
recruits of one company to whom the question was put who Bismarck was,
not a single one could answer. That the scholars acquire even a general
idea of their duties to the country and the State is quite out of the
question. It is impossible to rouse the affection and fancy of the
children by instruction in history, because the two sexes are taught in
common. One thing appeals to the heart of boys, another to those of
girls; and, although I consider it important that patriotic feelings
should be inculcated among girls, since as mothers they will transmit
them to the family, still the girls must be influenced in a different
way from the boys. When the instruction is common to both, the treatment
of the subject by the teacher remains neutral and colourless. It is
quite incomprehensible how such great results are expected in the
religious field when so little has been achieved in every other field.
This pedantic school has wandered far indeed from the ideal that
Frederick the Great set up. He declared that the duty of the State was
"to educate the young generation to independent thinking and
self-devoted love of country."
[Footnote A: Recently a boy was discharged from a well-known national
school as an exceptionally good scholar, and was sent as well qualified
to the office of a Head Forester. He showed that he could not copy
correctly, to say nothing of writing by himself.]
Our national school of to-day needs, then, searching and thorough reform
if it is to be a preparatory school, not only for military education,
but for life generally. It sends children out into the world with
undeveloped reasoning faculties, and equipped with the barest elements
of knowledge, and thus makes them not only void of self-reliance, but
easy victims of all the corrupting influences of social life. As a
matter of fact, the mind and reasoning faculties of the national
schoolboy are developed for the first time by his course of instruction
as a recruit.
It is obviously not my business to indicate the paths to such a reform.
I will only suggest the points which seem to me the most important from
the standpoint of a citizen and a soldier.
First and foremost, the instruction must be more individual. The number
of teachers, accordingly, must be increased, and that of scholars
diminished. It is worth while considering in this connection the
feasibility of beginning school instruction at the age of eight years.
Then all teaching must be directed, more than at present, to the object
of developing the children's minds, and formal religious instruction
should only begin in due harmony with intellectual progress. Finally,
the _Realien,_ especially the history of our own country, should claim
more attention, and patriotic feelings should be encouraged in every
way; while in religious instruction the moral influence of religion
should be more prominent than the formal contents. The training of the
national school teacher must be placed on a new basis. At present it
absolutely corresponds to the one-sided and limited standpoint of the
school itself, and does not enable the teachers to develop the minds and
feelings of their pupils. It must be reckoned a distinct disadvantage
for the upgrowing generation that all instruction ends at the age of
fourteen, so that, precisely at the period of development in which the
reasoning powers are forming, the children are thrown back on themselves
and on any chance influences. In the interval between school life and
military service the young people not only forget all that they learnt,
perhaps with aptitude, in the national school, but they unthinkingly
adopt distorted views of life, and in many ways become brutalized from a
lack of counteracting ideals.
A compulsory continuation school is therefore an absolute necessity of
the age. It is also urgently required from the military standpoint. Such
a school, to be fruitful in results, must endeavour, not only to prevent
the scholar from forgetting what he once learnt, and to qualify him for
a special branch of work, but, above all, to develop his patriotism and
sense of citizenship. To do this, it is necessary to explain to him the
relation of the State to the individual, and to explain, by reference to
our national history, how the individual can only prosper by devotion to
the State. The duties of the individual to the State should be placed in
the foreground. This instruction must be inspired by the spirit which
animated Schleiermacher's sermons in the blackest hour of Prussia, and
culminated in the doctrine that all the value of the man lies in the
strength and purity of his will, in his free devotion to the great
whole; that property and life are only trusts, which must be employed
for higher ideals; that the mind, which thinks only of itself, perishes
in feeble susceptibility, but that true moral worth grows up only in the
love for the fatherland and for the State, which is a haven for every
faith, and a home of justice and honourable freedom of purpose.
Only if national education works in this sense will it train up men to
fill our armies who have been adequately prepared for the school of
arms, and bring with them the true soldierly spirit from which great
deeds spring. What can be effected by the spirit of a nation we have
learnt from the history of the War of Liberation, that never-failing
source of patriotic sentiment, which should form the backbone and centre
of history-teaching in the national and the continuation schools.
We can study it also by an example from most recent history, in the
Russo-Japanese War. "The education of the whole Japanese people,
beginning at home and continued at school, was based on a patriotic and
warlike spirit. That education, combined with the rapidly acquired
successes in culture and warfare, aroused in the Japanese a marvellous
confidence in their own strength. They served with pride in the ranks of
the army, and dreamed of heroic deeds.... All the thoughts of the
nation were turned towards the coming struggle, while in the course of
several years they had spent their last farthing in the creation of a
powerful army and a strong fleet."[B] This was the spirit that led the
Japanese to victory. "The day when the young Japanese enlisted was
observed as a festival in his family."[B]
In Russia, on the contrary, the idea was preached and disseminated that
"Patriotism was an obsolete notion," "war was a crime and an
anachronism," that "warlike deeds deserved no notice, the army was the
greatest bar to progress, and military service a dishonourable
trade."[B] Thus the Russian army marched to battle without any
enthusiasm, or even any comprehension of the momentous importance of the
great racial war, "not of free will, but from necessity." Already eaten
up by the spirit of revolution and unpatriotic selfishness, without
energy or initiative, a mechanical tool in the hand of uninspired
leaders, it tamely let itself be beaten by a weaker opponent.
[Footnote B: "The Work of the Russian General Staff," from the Russian by
Freiheu v. Tettau.]
I have examined these conditions closely because I attach great
importance to the national school and the continuation school as a means
to the military education of our people. I am convinced that only the
army of a warlike and patriotic people can achieve anything really
great. I understand, of course, that the school alone, however high its
efficiency, could not develop that spirit in our people which we, in
view of our great task in the future, must try to awaken by every means
if we wish to accomplish something great. The direct influence of school
ends when the young generation begins life, and its effect must at first
make itself felt very gradually. Later generations will reap the fruits
of its sowing. Its efficiency must be aided by other influences which
will not only touch the young men now living, but persist throughout
their lives. Now, there are two means available which can work upon
public opinion and on the spiritual and moral education of the nation;
one is the Press, the other is a policy of action. If the Government
wishes to win a proper influence over the people, not in order to secure
a narrow-spirited support of its momentary policy, but to further its
great political, social, and moral duties, it must control a strong and
national Press, through which it must present its views and aims
vigorously and openly. The Government will never be able to count upon a
well-armed and self-sacrificing people in the hour of danger or
necessity, if it calmly looks on while the warlike spirit is being
systematically undermined by the Press and a feeble peace policy
preached, still less if it allows its own organs to join in with the
same note, and continually to emphasize the maintenance of peace as the
object of all policy. It must rather do everything to foster a military
spirit, and to make the nation comprehend the duties and aims of an
imperial policy.
It must continually point to the significance and the necessity of war
as an indispensable agent in policy and civilization, together with the
duty of self-sacrifice and devotion to State and country.
A parliamentary Government, which always represents merely a temporary
majority, may leave the party Press to defend and back its views; but a
Government like the German, which traces its justification to the fact
that it is superior to all parties, cannot act thus. Its point of view
does not coincide with that of any party; it adopts a middle course,
conscious that it is watching the welfare of the whole community. It
must therefore represent its attitude, on general issues as well as on
particular points, independently, and must endeavour to make its aims as
widely understood as possible. I regard it, therefore, as one of the
most important duties of a Government like ours to use the Press freely
and wisely for the enlightenment of the people. I do not mean that a few
large political journals should, in the interests of the moment, be well
supplied with news, but that the views of the Government should find
comprehensive expression in the local Press. It would be an advantage,
in my opinion, were all newspapers compelled to print certain
announcements of the Government, in order that the reader might not have
such a one-sided account of public affairs as the party Press supplies.
It would be a measure of public moral and intellectual hygiene, as
justifiable as compulsory regulations in the interests of public health.
Epidemics of ideas and opinions are in our old Europe more dangerous and
damaging than bodily illnesses, and it is the duty of the State to
preserve the moral healthiness of the nation.
More important, perhaps, than teaching and enlightenment by the Press is
the _propaganda of action._ Nothing controls the spirit of the multitude
so effectually as energetic, deliberate, and successful action conceived
in a broad-minded, statesmanlike sense. Such education by a powerful
policy is an absolute necessity for the German people. This nation
possesses an excess of vigour, enterprise, idealism, and spiritual
energy, which qualifies it for the highest place; but a malignant fairy
laid on its cradle the most petty theoretical dogmatism. In addition to
this, an unhappy historical development which shattered the national and
religious unity of the nation created in the system of small States and
in confessionalism a fertile soil for the natural tendency to
particularism, on which it flourished luxuriantly as soon as the nation
was no longer inspired with great and unifying thoughts. Yet the heart
of this people can always be won for great and noble aims, even though
such aims can only be attended by danger. We must not be misled in this
respect by the Press, which often represents a most one-sided,
self-interested view, and sometimes follows international or even
Anti-German lines rather than national. The soul of our nation is not
reflected in that part of the Press with its continual dwelling on the
necessity of upholding peace, and its denunciation of any bold and
comprehensive political measure as a policy of recklessness.
On the contrary, an intense longing for a foremost place among the
Powers and for manly action fills our nation. Every vigorous utterance,
every bold political step of the Government, finds in the soul of the
people a deeply felt echo, and loosens the bonds which fetter all their
forces. In a great part of the national Press this feeling has again and
again found noble expression. But the statesman who could satisfy this
yearning, which slumbers in the heart of our people undisturbed by the
clamour of parties and the party Press, would carry all spirits with
him.
He is no true statesman who does not reckon with these factors of
national psychology; Bismarck possessed this art, and used k with a
master-hand. True, he found ready to hand one idea which was common to
all--the sincere wish for German unification and the German Empire; but
the German nation, in its dissensions, did not know the ways which lead
to the realization of this idea. Only under compulsion and after a hard
struggle did it enter on the road of success; but the whole nation was
fired with high enthusiasm when it finally recognized the goal to which
the great statesman was so surely leading it. Success was the foundation
on which Bismarck built up the mighty fabric of the German Empire. Even
in the years of peace he understood how to rivet the imagination of the
people by an ambitious and active policy, and how, in spite of all
opposition, to gain over the masses to his views, and make them serve
his own great aims. He, too, made mistakes as man and as politician, and
the motto _Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto_ holds good of him;
but in its broad features his policy was always imperial and of
world-wide scope, and he never lost sight of the principle that no
statesman can permanently achieve great results unless he commands the
soul of his people.
This knowledge he shared with all the great men of our past, with the
Great Elector, Frederick the Incomparable, Scharnhorst and Blücher; for
even that hoary marshal was a political force, the embodiment of a
political idea, which, to be sure, did not come into the foreground at
the Congress of Vienna.
The statesman who wishes to learn from history should above all things
recognize this one fact--that success is necessary to gain influence
over the masses, and that this influence can only be obtained by
continually appealing to the national imagination and enlisting its
interest in great universal ideas and great national ambitions.
Such a policy is also the best school in which to educate a nation to
great military achievements. When their spirits are turned towards high
aims they feel themselves compelled to contemplate war bravely, and to
prepare their minds to it:
"The man grows up, with manhood's nobler aims."
We may learn something from Japan on this head. Her eyes were fixed on
the loftiest aims; she did not shrink from laying the most onerous
duties on the people, but she understood how to fill the soul of the
whole people with enthusiasm for her great ideals, and thus a nation of
warriors was educated which supplied the best conceivable material for
the army, and was ready for the greatest sacrifices.
We Germans have a far greater and more urgent duty towards civilization
to perform than the Great Asiatic Power. We, like the Japanese, can only
fulfil it by the sword.
Shall we, then, decline to adopt a bold and active policy, the most
effective means with which we can prepare our people for its military
duty? Such a counsel is only for those who lack all feeling for the
strength and honour of the German people.