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Title: Gems (?) of German Thought
Author: Archer, William, 1856-1924 [Editor]
Language: English
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GEMS (?) OF
GERMAN THOUGHT
COMPILED BY
WILLIAM ARCHER
[Illustration]
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1917
_Copyright, 1917, by_
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
_All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian_
THOR'S HAMMER-CAST
Thor stood at the midnight end of the world,
His battle-mace flew from his hand:
"So far as my clangorous hammer I've hurled
Mine are the sea and the land!"
And onward hurtled the mighty sledge
O'er the wide, wide earth, to fall
At last on the Southland's furthest edge
In token that His was all.
Since then 'tis the joyous German right
With the hammer lands to win.
We mean to inherit world-wide might
As the Hammer-God's kith and kin.
FELIX DAHN (1878).
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 3
I
"DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLES" 31
German Humility 31
The Gentle German 49
The Great Misunderstood 55
Kultur 57
Der deutsche Gott 69
The Chosen People and its Mission 78
"Other Peoples" 84
Christ 88
Die deutsche Wahrheit 94
German Insight and Foresight 98
German Freedom 100
The German Language 101
II
GERMAN AMBITIONS 107
Expansion in Europe 107
Expansion beyond Europe 118
Weltmacht 122
III
WAR-WORSHIP 133
The Lust of Battle 133
War and Religion 135
War and Ethics 137
War and Biology 140
War and Kultur 143
Blood and Iron 145
War Necessary to Germany 149
War Need not be Defensive 153
Contempt for Peace 154
Militarism Exultant 159
IV
RUTHLESSNESS 169
V
MACHIAVELISM 185
Mendacity and Faithlessness 185
Might is Right 194
VI
ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND BELGIUM--ESPECIALLY ENGLAND 199
The False Islanders 199
Hymns of Hate 201
British Vices--Hypocrisy, Envy, and Greed 208
British Vices--Cowardice and Laziness 215
Treachery to Germanism 218
Sir Edward Grey and his Colleagues 220
Britain's Great Illusion 223
Comic Relief 228
France 233
Belgium 235
Index of Books and Pamphlets from which quotations are made 243
Index of Authors 255
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
In accordance with classic precedent, this anthology ought to have
consisted of "1,001 Gems of German Thought," I have been content with
half that number, not--heaven knows!--for any lack of material, but
simply for lack of time and energy to make the ingathering. After all,
enough is as good as a feast, and I think that the evidence as to the
dominant characteristics of German mentality is tolerably complete as
it stands.
Though I hope it is fairly representative, the collection does not
pretend to be systematic. I have cast no sweeping drag-net, but have
simply dipped almost at random into the wide ocean of German thought.
Some of my most precious "finds" I have come upon by pure chance; and
by pure chance, too, I have no doubt missed many others. Some books
that I should have liked to examine have not been accessible to me;
and there must be many of which I have never heard. On the other hand,
the list of books from which my gems have been selected by no means
indicates the extent of my reading--or skimming. I have gone through
many books and pamphlets which furnished no quotable extracts, but
none that diverged in tone from the rest, or marred the majestic
unison of German self-laudation and contempt for the rest of the
world. I have read of (but not seen) a book by one F.W. Förster which
is said to contain a protest against theoretic war-worship, and even a
mild defence of England. How very mild it is we may judge from this
sentence: "England has given us not only men like Lord Grey,
scoundrels and hypocrites, who have this war upon their conscience; it
has also given us the Salvation Army," etc., etc.
One voice the reader may be surprised to miss from the great
chorus--the voice of William the Second. He is unrepresented--save in
one passing remark (No. 136)--for two reasons. In the first place,
his most striking utterance--the injunction to his soldiers to emulate
the Huns of Attila--though almost certainly genuine, is not official,
and could not be quoted without discussion.[1] In the second place, to
confess the truth, I shrank from the intolerable monotony of reading
his Majesty's speeches--that endless array of platitudes in full
uniform--on the chance of discovering one or two quotable gems.
Practically all my quotations are taken from books and pamphlets. The
sole exceptions are a few extracts from pre-war newspapers, cited in
Nippold's "Der deutsche Chauvinismus." It would have been an endless
and unprofitable task to garner up the extravagances of German
newspapers since the outbreak of the war; not to mention that a German
anthologist could probably make a pretty effective retort by going
through the files of the British war press.
Is my anthology as it stands open to a telling _tu quoque_ by means of
a selection of gems from British books and pamphlets of the type of
those from which I have made my gleanings? Is it a case of the mote
and the beam? I think we may be pretty confident that it is not. I
doubt whether the literature of the world can show a parallel to the
amazing outburst of tribal arrogance, unrestrained and unashamed, of
which these pages contain but a few scattered specimens. In the
extracts from literature "Before the War" (which have always been kept
apart from those which date from "After July, 1914"), the reader may
see this habit of mind growing and gathering strength: the declaration
of war opens the floodgates, and the torrent rushes forth, grandiose,
overwhelming, and, I believe, unique. I know of only one English book
in which the German taste and temper is emulated. It is certainly a
deplorable production; but it is the work of a wholly unknown man,
whereas many of the most incredible utterances in the following pages
proceed from men of world-wide reputation. Indeed, few contemporary
German names of much distinction are absent from my list.
Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, Harnack, Wundt, Oncken, Eucken, Haeckel,
Naumann, Rohrbach, Sombart, Liszt, all join with a will in the chorus
of arrogance, ambition, and hate. Many quotations come from a series
of pamphlets called _Deutsche Reden in schwerer Zeit_, to which all
the most eminent professors of Berlin University have contributed,
with some from other universities. I have also, no doubt, culled
passages from a good many nobodies and busybodies; but when the
nobodies and the somebodies are found to echo and re-echo each other,
the inference is that the general tone of the public mind is very
fairly represented. It will be noted that many of the wildest shrieks
of self-glorification and ferocity proceed from clerics and
theologians.
The world as a whole has been curiously blind to the inordinate
self-valuation characteristic of the German spirit. So long ago as the
beginning of last century, we find Fichte assuring his countrymen
that: "There are no two ways about it: if you founder, the whole of
humanity founders with you, without hope of any possible restoration."
Even Heine, in the preface to "Deutschland" (1844) could write
half-jestingly that "if only the Germans would out-soar the French in
deeds, as they already had in thought," and if they would carry out in
their spiritual and political life some rather vaguely indicated
reforms, "not only Alsace and Lorraine, but all France, all Europe,
the whole world, would become German." "I often dream," he adds, "of
this mission, this universal dominance of Germany." Of course we are
not to write Heine down a Pan-German of the modern, realistic type.
There is more than a dash of irony in this passage--he obviously
implies that there is very little chance of Germany fulfilling the
conditions that he lays down as indispensable to her world-domination.
Nevertheless, there is a sinister significance in the fact that a
spirit like his should be found dallying for a moment with dreams of
world-supremacy. It was, of course, the war of 1870, with its
resounding triumphs, that brought these visions, so to speak, within
the range of practical politics. For fifteen or twenty years, Germany
was, as Bismarck said, "sated"; but with the coming of the youthful,
pushful, self-assertive Kaiser, her aggressive instincts re-awakened
and she fell to brooding over the idea that her incomparable physical
and spiritual energies were cabin'd, cribb'd, confined. The rapid
growth of her population reinforced this idea, and the increase of her
wealth, as was natural, only made her greedy for more. The result was
that she gave her soul over in fatal earnest to an ambitious and
grasping tribalism to which she was, from of old, only too prone. The
Pan-Germans were the Uhlans, the stormy petrels, of the movement; but
the whole mind of the nation was in reality carried away by it, save
for a very small section which was conscious of its dangers and feebly
protested. The egoism of which she was constantly accusing other
nations, ran riot in her own breast, was elevated into a political
virtue, and expressed itself on the spiritual side in a towering
racial vanity. The word "deutsch," always a word of magical
properties, became the synonym of an unapproachable superiority in
every walk of life[2]--a superiority that sanctified aggression and
made domination a duty. In many minds, no doubt, these sentiments wore
a decent mask; but the moment war broke out, the mask dropped off,
with the amazing results very imperfectly mirrored in the following
pages.
But self-worship and the craving for aggrandizement are in reality
very uninspiring emotions. The thing that has most deeply impressed me
in my searching of the German war-scriptures is the extraordinary
aridity of spirit that pervades them. A literature more unidea'd (to
use Johnson's word), more devoid of original thought, or grace, or
charm, or atmosphere, it would be hard to conceive. There are, of
course, some inequalities. One or two writers seem (to the foreign
reader) to have a certain dignity of style which is lacking in the
common herd. But in the very best there is little that gives one even
literary pleasure, and nothing that shows any depth of humanity, any
generous feeling, any openness of outlook. Even a happy phrase is so
rare that, when it does occur, one treasures it. I find, for instance,
in a little book by Friedrich Meinecke, a distinction between
"politics of ideas and politics of interests" that is happily put and
worth remembering. Again, Professor v. Harnack re-states the principle
that "he's the best cosmopolite who loves his native country best" in
a rather ingenious way: "There is no such thing as fruit," he says,
"there are only apples, pears, etc. If we want to be good fruit, we
must be a good apple or a good pear." These are small scintillations,
but the toiler through German pamphlet literature is truly grateful
for them.
For the rest, when you have read three or four of these pamphlets, you
have read all. The writers seem to be working a sort of Imperial
German treadmill, stepping dutifully from plank to plank of patriotic
dogma in a pre-arranged rotation. The topics are few and
ever-recurrent--"dieser uns aufgezwungene Krieg" (this war which has
been forced upon us), the glorious uprising of Germany at its
outbreak, the miracle of mobilization, the Russian knout, French
frivolity, the base betrayal of Germany by envious, hypocritical
England, the immeasurable superiority of German Kultur and Technik,
the saintly virtues of the German soldier, and so on, through the
appointed litany. There is even a set of obligatory quotations which
very few have the strength of mind to resist. By far the most popular
is Geibel's couplet:
Und es mag am deutschen Wesen
Einmal noch die Welt genesen.
(And the world may once more be healed by the German nature, or
character.) It came into vogue before the war. The Kaiser struck the
keynote of the whole chorus of self-exaltation when he said (August
31, 1907): "The German people will be the granite block on which the
good God may build and complete His work of Kultur in the world. Then
will be fulfilled the word of the poet who said that the world will
one day be healed by the German character." In the extracts collected
in Nippold's "Der deutsche Chauvinismus" (a pre-war publication) the
Geibel couplet appears at least four times--probably oftener. After
the outbreak of the war, it is easier to reckon the utterances in
which it does _not_ occur than those in which it does. Next in
popularity to the "Wesen--genesen" catchword comes the Kaiser's
brilliant saying, "I no longer know of any parties--I know only German
brothers." He is no good German who does not quote this with reverent
admiration. Then come four or five others which are about equally in
request: Bismarck's "We Germans fear God, and nothing else in the
world"; "the old _furor Teutonicus_"; "_oderint dum metuant_";
Arndt's
Der Gott der Eisen wachsen liess,
Der wollte keine Knechte--
(The God who made the iron grow meant none to be a bondman); and,
finally,
Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär',
Es soll uns doch gelingen--
(And though the world were full of devils, we should succeed in spite
of them.) Even a scholar of the distinction of Ulrich v.
Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, though he avoids the Geibel tag, ends one of
his orations by quoting "Deutschland über Alles." Imagine Sir Walter
Raleigh or Prof. Gilbert Murray winding up an address with a selection
from "Rule, Britannia"!
One English quotation occurs as often as any, except the ubiquitous
"Wesen-genesen." It is "My country, right or wrong," invariably quoted
in the form, "Right or wrong, my country." This is supposed to be the
shockingly immoral watchword of British patriotism. It matters nothing
to the German pamphleteer that the maxim is American, and that it is
never quoted in England--nor, I believe, in the country of its
origin--except in a spirit of irony.
And in the face of this deadly uniformity of sentiments, phraseology,
and quotations, Professor Lasson has the audacity to assure us that
"The German is personally independent. He wants to judge for himself.
It is not so easy for him as for others blindly to follow this or that
catchword!"
We are all, I suppose, unconscious of our own foibles, but I wonder
whether we are all so apt as the Germans to deny them (and very likely
attribute them to other people) while in the very act of exemplifying
them. For example, it is firmly fixed in the German mind that the
English consider themselves God's Chosen People, predestined to the
empire of the world. I have collected numerous instances of this
allegation (Nos. 453-466), but not a single one which is substantiated
by a quotation from an English writer. It is, I am convinced,
impossible to bring evidence for it, unless some expressions to this
effect may be found in the writings of persons who believe that the
English are descended from the lost Ten Tribes--persons who are about
as representative of the English nation as those who believe that the
earth is flat. The English mind, indeed, is but little inclined to
this primitive form of theism. The German mind, on the other hand, is
curiously addicted to it, and I have brought together a number of
instances (Nos. 117-135) in which German writers make the very claim
to Divine calling and election which they falsely attribute to the
English, and denounce as insanely presumptuous.[3] So, too, with
egoism. The Germans do not actually consider themselves free from
egoism; on the contrary, they are rather given to boasting of it (Nos.
212, 213, 248, 300); but while it is a virtue in them, it is a very
repulsive vice in the English. As for cant, which is, of course, the
commonest charge against the English, one can only say that, when the
German gives his mind to it, he proves himself an accomplished master
of the art (Nos. 47, 55, 79, 89, 94, 104, 237, 423). Here is an
example, from a book about Germany by a German-Austrian,[4] which
scarcely comes within the scope of my anthology, but it is too
characteristic to be lost. "_If you want_," says the writer, in
italics, "_thoroughly to understand the German, you must compare the
German sportsman with the hunters of other countries_. Then a sacred
thrill (_heiliger Schauer_) of deep understanding will come over your
heart." For the German sportsman "takes more pleasure in the life that
surrounds him and which he _protects_, than in the shot which only the
last hot virile craving (_Mannesgier_) wrings from him, and which he
fires only when he knows that he will _kill_, _painlessly kill_. For
this is the root principle of German sportsmanship: 'God grant me one
day such an end as I strive to bestow upon the game.' ... And if, by
mischance, the German sportsman wounds without killing a head of game,
he suffers with it, and does not sleep or rest till he has put it out
of its misery." If this be not very nauseous cant, where shall we seek
for it?
Another curious German characteristic is the idea that, however
truculent and menacing a writer's expressions may be, other people do
him and his country a wicked injustice if they take him at his word. A
good instance of this occurs in "Ein starkes Volk--Ein starkes Heer,"
by Kurd v. Strantz, published in 1914, shortly before the war. This
writer quotes (or rather misquotes) with enthusiasm from Goethe:--
Du musst steigen und gewinnen,
Du musst siegend triumphieren
Oder deinend unterliegen,
Amboss oder Hammer sein.[5]
Next he proceeds to quote from Felix Dahn:--
Seitdem ist's freudig Germanenrecht
Mit dem Hammer Land zu erwerben.
Wir sind von des Hammergottes Geschlecht,
Und wollen sein Weltreich erben.[6]
Then, on the same page, only four lines lower down, he remarks
plaintively:--"Foreign, and especially French, diplomacy is now
industriously spreading the calumny that the German Government and the
German people are given to rattling the sabre, and that we want to use
for aggressive ends the increased armament which has been forced upon
us." Is it mere hostile prejudice to hold that his own poetical
selections give a certain colour to the "calumny"?
Most of the German attacks on England will be found, in the last
analysis, to rest on this quaint habit of mind--the habit of assuming
that, no matter how hostile and threatening Germany's words and deeds
might be, we had no right to do her the injustice of supposing that
she meant anything by them. We ought to have known that she was merely
"dissembling her love."
Some readers may be disposed to regret that the great Germanic
trinity, Nietzsche-Treitschke-Bernhardi, contribute so largely to my
anthology. In the first place, it may be said, we are tired of their
names; in the second place, Germans deny that they have had anything
like the influence we attribute to them. There is a certain validity
in the first of these objections. The constant recurrence of these
three names is certainly a little tedious. They are like a
three-headed Charles I--or a triplicate Geibel. I would gladly have
omitted them had it been by any means possible. But one might as well
compile an Old Testament anthology and omit Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
Ezekiel. For, whatever the Germans may say, they are the major
prophets of the new-German spirit. Treitschke is the prophet of
tribalism, Nietzsche of ruthlessness, Bernhardi of ambition. It is
absurd to say that they are not influential. Treitschke may have
fallen somewhat out of fashion in the years immediately preceding the
war, but his spirit had permeated the political thought of a whole
generation. To the living influence of Nietzsche there is a host of
witnesses. Gerhart Hauptmann, near the beginning of the war, averred
that the cultured German soldier carried "Zarathustra," along with
"Faust" and the Bible, in his knapsack. Nor was this an idle guess.
Professor Deissmann, of Berlin, tells us that he enquired into the
matter, and learned from book-sellers that the books most in demand
among soldiers were the New Testament, "Faust" and "Zarathustra."
O.A.H. Schmitz, in "Das wirkliche Deutschland," says of the German
youth born in the 'seventies and early 'eighties that Nietzsche was
"the lighthouse toward which their enthusiasm was directed." Prof.
Wilhelm Bousset, of Göttingen, writes: "There is among us much unripe,
unclear Nietzsche enthusiasm: many a German ass has thrown the lion's
skin of the great man round his shoulders, and thinks he has thereby
become a philosopher and prophet." Such testimonies could be
multiplied indefinitely. There is no question that Nietzsche has been
by far the greatest single force among the spiritual shapers of
new-Germany. It may be true that he did not intend his "immoralism" to
be read literally as a guide to conduct--it may be true that, in some
of his most characteristic passages, he knew himself to be talking
reckless and dangerous nonsense (that was his way of "living
dangerously")--but can we reasonably suppose that soldiers in a
"conquered" country, soldiers full of the belief that any opposition
to Germanism was in itself a crime (see No. 344), paused to look
beneath his surface eulogies of murder and lust for some esoteric
meaning that may possibly underlie them? Can it be a mere coincidence
that, in the first war which Germany has waged since Nietzsche entered
upon his apostolate of ruthlessness, the German armies should have
been animated, to all appearance, by a literal interpretation of his
"beast of prey" ideal?
As for Bernhardi, whom some German writers profess never to have heard
of until we began to talk about him in England, one can only say that
he is an ex-member of the Great General Staff, and is probably a
pretty faithful interpreter of the ideas prevalent in that not
un-influential organization. Moreover, his "Germany and the Next War,"
which appeared in the spring of 1912, ran through five editions at 6
marks before that year was out, and was then republished in a cheap
and somewhat condensed popular edition under the title of "Our
Future." Reviewing this edition, _Die Post_ says that, in its original
form, the book "was received with the most serious attention in
political and especially in military circles," and adds that this
cheaper reprint "_must_ now become a book for the people."
It is an error, however, to suppose that a writer's importance is to
be measured solely by the influence he can be shown to have exerted. A
book or pamphlet may have had little or no active influence, and may
yet be a very illuminating symptom of the national frame of mind.
Every book must be an effect before it can become a cause. That
Treitschke, Nietzsche, and Bernhardi have been very efficient causes I
see no reason to doubt; but at any rate they are immensely significant
effects of the psychological conditions of which I am here gathering
up some random evidences.
It was a more difficult question to decide whether the lucubrations of
Herr Houston Stewart Chamberlain came within my scope. Yet I had
little hesitation in including him. The fact that he is by birth an
Englishman does not make him any the less a characteristic and
recognized mouthpiece of the new-German spirit. It may be objected
that he caricatures it, that he is more German than the Germans. That,
in the first place, is impossible; in the second place, while we have
many evidences that Germans, from the Kaiser downward, set a high
value on Herr Chamberlain's writings, we hear little or nothing of any
protest against them as misrepresentations of "Deutschtum." Shall I be
suspected of a quaint perversity of national prejudice if I say that
Herr Chamberlain's war pamphlets are distinctly better reading than
the great majority of their kind? They are much more individual, much
less stereotyped and monotonous. One finds in them an occasional idea
that is not the common property of every man in the street. It is
generally (not always) a more or less crazy idea, but one hails it as
an oasis in the desert of blusterous commonplace.
The arrangement of my little jewel-heap was more difficult, if less
laborious, than the ingathering. Many of my extracts, perhaps most,
might with equal appropriateness have been ranged under any one of
three or four rubrics. Thus my classification is at best rough and, to
some extent, arbitrary. There is, however, a certain reason in the
sequence of headings. The first section, "Deutschland über Alles,"
represents the "badge of all the tribe"--the characteristic which lies
at the root of the whole mischief--Germany's colossal self-glorification,
self-adoration. If there is anything like it in history, it is unknown
to me. Other nations may have been as vain, but, not having the
printing-press so readily at command, they gave their vanity less
exuberant expression. Besides, they may have had a sense of humour. The
manifestations of this foible (if a thing of such tragic consequences
can be called by such a name) fall under certain sub-headings. It was
clear, for instance, that the vauntings of German Kultur must have a
compartment to themselves--likewise the assertions of a special
relation to God, the claims to the status of a Chosen People, and the
comparisons, direct and indirect, between Germany and Christ. Having
established, by means of a cloud of witnesses, the ruling passion of
the national mind, I present in the following section proofs of the
"Ambitions" in which this megalomania finds its natural utterance. In
the sections, "War-Worship," "Ruthlessness" and "Machiavelism," are
grouped evidences of the methods of force and fraud by which it was
hoped that these ambitions were to be realized. Then, in a final
section, I have assembled evidences of the inevitable corollary to
morbid self-adoration--the boundless and almost equally unprecedented
contempt and loathing for all adversaries, but especially for England.
The great majority of my quotations are taken direct from the original
sources, the references being exactly given. I was scrupulous on this
point, not only that the reader might be able to test the accuracy and
fairness[7] of my work, but because I hoped that some one, some day,
might be moved to republish the anthology in the original German. One
cannot but think that, when the war-frenzy is over, a brief retrospect
of its extravagances may be salutary for the German spirit. In a
certain number of cases, however, I have not been able to give exact
references, because the originals have not been accessible to me. This
applies to my selections from three previous volumes of selections:
Nippold's "Der Deutsche Chauvinismus," Andler's "Collection de
documents sur le Pangermanisme," and Bang's "Hurrah and Halleluiah."
Andler's excellent and scholarly method has, however, enabled me to
"place" quotations from his collection to within a page or two. Thus,
if some very Pan-German utterance does not occur on the precise page I
have indicated, it will certainly be found on the preceding or on the
following page.
Italics in my text always represent italics, or, rather, spaced type,
in the original; but Germans are very lavish in their use of spaced
type, and I have not always thought it necessary to reproduce this
peculiarity. Points of exclamation, unless enclosed in square
brackets, are the author's, not mine. I have almost always resisted
the temptation to employ typographical devices to enhance the lustre
of individual gems. In the Index of Authors I have added to many names
a brief note which will enable the reader to estimate the position of
the different writers in the public life of Germany.
In bringing together my material, I have found valuable help in many
quarters. I should like especially to acknowledge my deep obligation
to Mr. Alexander Gray for manifold aid and suggestion.
W.A.
_6th December, 1916._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] On the other hand, the almost equally remarkable warning to
recruits that they must be ready to shoot down their nearest and
dearest at the All-Highest command, is undoubtedly authentic.
[2] In a pamphlet by Professor A. Lasson, entitled _Deutsche Art und
deutsche Bildung_, the adjective "deutsch" occurs 256 times in 42
pages--sometimes 13 times in one page, often 10 or 11 times--and
always, of course, with a sort of unctuous implication that human
language contains no higher term of eulogy. This enumeration does not
include the constantly recurring "deutsch" in "Deutschland," nor the
frequently repeated "germanisch" and "teutonisch."
[3] It may, of course, be possible to find many passages in which
English writers say that, as a matter of history, God, or Heaven, or
Providence, has given the British race great possessions throughout the
world--a fact which the Germans are the first to admit and resent. But
this is totally different from claiming a Divine mission to rule, or to
civilize, or to "heal" the world.
[4] "Das Deutsche Volk in schwerer Zeit," by R.H. Bartsch, p. 118.
[5] Thou must mount and win, thou must triumph in victory or else sink
into subjection--thou must be either anvil or hammer.
[6] Since then 'tis the joyous German right with the hammer to win
land. We are of the race of the Hammer-God, and mean to inherit his
world-empire. [This poem appeared in 1878, was reprinted by the author
in 1900, in a selection from his own works, and is quoted in "Deutsche
Geschichte in Liedern," Vol I., p. 10. The last two lines form the
motto of Otto Richard Tannenberg's _Gross-Deutschland: die Arbeit des
20 Jahrhunerts_.]
[7] It will be found by any one who puts the matter to the test that in
no case is there any unfairness in taking these brief extracts out of
their context. The context is almost always an aggravating rather than
an extenuating circumstance.
I
"DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLES"
I
"DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLES"
=German Humility.=
(BEFORE THE WAR.)
1. No people ever attains to national consciousness without
over-rating itself. The Germans are always in danger of enervating
their nationality through possessing too little of this rugged
pride.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p. 19.
_For further testimonies to German humility see Nos. 17, 20, 23, 36,
51, 106, 122, 206, 206b, 394._
2. The German people must rise as a master-folk above the inferior
peoples of Europe and the primitive peoples of the colonies.--G.U.M.,
p. 8.
2a. The German people is always right, because it is the German
people, and numbers 87 million souls.--O.R. TANNENBERG, G.D., p. 231.
3. The French, under Napoleon, wanted to sacrifice the whole world to
their insatiable thirst for glory, and the English treat every barrier
opposed to their hunger for exploitation as a challenge to their
superiority. Great is the gulf that separates these cupidities from
the hitherto unrivalled moral elevation of the sense of honour in the
German people.--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 220 (1901).
_Compare Section V., "Machiavelism."_
4. My soul is heavy when I see the many enemies surrounding
Germany.... And my thoughts fly forward into the far future, and ask,
"Will there ever be a time when there is no more Germany?" ... How
poor and empty would the rich world then become! Then all men would
ask themselves, "How comes it that the peoples no longer understand
each other? Whither has that great, serene power departed, that
brought near the souls of the peoples, each to each? Who has shattered
the marvellous mirror from which the countenance of the world was
thoughtfully reflected?" Then they would strike their heads and their
breasts in despair, crying: "We have criminally robbed ourselves of
our wealth! The world, the great, rich world, has grown waste, poor,
and empty: the world has no longer a soul, she has no longer a
Germany!"--E. v. WILDENBRUCH (1889), quoted in D.R.S.Z., No. 12.
5. The proud conviction forces itself upon us with irresistible power
that a high, if not the highest, importance for the entire development
of the human race is ascribable to this German people.--GENERAL v.
BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 72.
6. The German is a hero born, and believes that he can hack and hew
his way through life.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p. 230.
7. We are still child-like in our inmost feelings, innocent in our
pleasures, simple in our inclinations, in spite of individual
aberrations; we are still prolific, and our race multiplies, so that
our own soil has long been insufficient to support us all. It is
therefore doubly imperative for us to remain heroes, for who knows
whether the Germanic migrations are destined to remain isolated
phenomena in history! The peoples around us are either overripe fruits
which the next storm may bring to the ground, such as the Turks,
Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese, and a great part of the Slavs; or they
are, indeed, proud of their race, but senile and artificial in their
Kultur, slow in their increase and boundless in their ambition, like
the French; or, confident in the unassailability of their country,
like the English and the Americans, they have forgotten justice and
made their selfishness the measure of all things. Who knows whether we
Germans are not the rod predestined for the chastening of these
degeneracies, who knows whether we may not again, like our fathers in
dim antiquity, have to gird on our swords and go forth to seek
dwelling-places for our increase?--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 159 (1893).
8. We are distinguished from other nations by our honourable love for
outspoken convictions, which would make a cut-and-dried party system
distasteful to us.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p. 148.
9. The surest means of serving the ends of humanity is to work at the
elaboration of our national personality, and to develop the full
strength of its crystalline radiance.--F. BLEY, W.D.D., p. 23.
10. We have forced ourselves, though the last-comers, the virtual
upstarts, between the States which have earlier gained their place, and
now claim our share in the dominion of the world, after we have for
centuries been paramount only in the realm of the intellect.--GENERAL
v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 13.
11. Why must teachers and schoolboys, year out, year in, worry about
the old Greeks and Romans? To foster idealism in the young, we are
told! But for that there is no need to go to Rome and Athens. Our
German history offers us ideals enough, and is richer in deeds of
heroism than Rome and Athens put together.--GENERAL KEIM, at meeting
of the German Defence League, Cassel, Feb., 1913; NIPPOLD, D.C., p.
82.
12. History teaches us that supreme treasure of humanity, German
idealism, can be preserved only in the stout bark of national
development.--F. BLEY, W.D.D., p. 23.
_On Idealism, see also Nos. 45, 276, 442, 464._
13. A war fought and lost would destroy our laboriously gained
political importance ... would shake the influence of German thought
in the civilized world, and thus check the general progress of mankind
in its healthy development, for which a flourishing Germany is the
essential condition. Our next war will be fought for the highest
interests of our country and of mankind. This will invest it with
importance in the world's history. "World-power or downfall!" will be
our rallying-cry.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 154.
14. In our German people, peaceful dispositions and war-like prowess
are so happily mixed that in this respect no other people on the
earth can rival us, and none seems so clearly predestined to light
humanity on the way to true progress.--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 158 (1893).
15. The Latin has no feeling for the beauty of a forest; when he takes
his repose in it he lies upon his stomach, while we rest upon our
backs.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p. 206.
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
16. If we compare our time with the great eras of our fathers, we are
perfectly capable of a sober self-criticism. We have no use for
illusions and self-deceptions on the way to our indispensable
victory.--PROF. F. MEINECKE, D.D.E., p. 10.
17. Where in the whole world can a people be found who have such cause
for manly pride as we? But we are equally far removed from presumption
and from arrogance.--"War Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in
H.A.H., p. 117.
18. As the German bird, the eagle, hovers high over all the creatures
of the earth, so also should the German feel that he is raised high
above all other nations who surround him, and whom he sees in the
limitless depth beneath him.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 143.
19. Germany is our existence, our faith, the meaning and depth of the
world.--"On the German God," by PASTOR W. LEHMANN, quoted in H.A.H.,
p. 84.
20. It is not only our enemies who, by their underground intrigues,
have sought to divert from us the sympathies of other peoples. If we
would speak frankly, we must admit that we ourselves are partly to
blame in the matter. A great part of the blame is due to our
insufficient self-esteem and self-valuation--an inveterate German
failing.--PROF. DR. R. JANNASCH, W.D.U.S., p. 22.
21. Germany is the future of humanity.--"On the German God," by PASTOR
W. LEHMANN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 78.
21a. God defend the noble cause of Deutschtum. There is no other hope
for the future of humanity.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, in _Hamburger
Nachrichten_, September, 1914.
21b. We must vanquish, because the downfall of Germanism would mean
the downfall of humanity.--"Six War Sermons," by PASTOR K. KÖNIG,
quoted in H.A.H., p. 99.
22. When the German stands leaning on his mighty sword, clad in steel
from top to toe, whosoever will may, down below, dance round his
feet--they may rail at him and throw mud at him, as the
"intellectuals" ... of England, France, Russia and Italy are now
doing--in his lofty repose he will not allow himself to be disturbed,
and will only reflect as did his ancestors. _Oderint dum
metuant._--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 131.
23. We will not conceal from ourselves that these victories for which
our bells ring and our flags wave, and for which we thank our God, may
become a danger to us, should they make us vain and arrogant,
boastful and indolent! God forbid! We will hold fast to our old
modesty, with which we have so often been reproached, and which has
indeed often enough degenerated into the undervaluing of ourselves and
overvaluing of that which is foreign and despicable.--K. ENGELBRECHT,
D.D.D.K., p. 53.
24. We must develop, not into "Europeans,'" but into ever higher
Germans.... What sort of a European would be formed by a mixture of
the heroic German with the calculating Englishman? If the result was a
man who thought half calculatingly and half heroically, it would be an
exaltation for the Englishman, but a degradation for the
German.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 125.
25. If we come victorious out of this war, we shall be the first
people on the earth, a rich stream of gold will pour over our land,
and this greatness, these riches, may be a blessing to us if we always
remember that true greatness, true riches, lie only in the possession
of _moral_ advantages, and that to the fact of our possessing such
advantages we owe our success.--W. HELM, W.W.S.M., p. 33.
26. Do you not see, Albion, that the German Michel,[8] on whom you
looked down with such contempt, is now transformed into the Archangel
Michael, and, encountering you with his flaming sword, triumphs over
the race of the fallen angels and all the offspring of hell.--F.
DELITZSCH, D.R.S.Z., No. 13, p. 21.
27. We must win, because, if we were defeated, no one in the _whole
world_ could any longer cherish any remnant of belief in truth and
right, in the Good, or, indeed, in any higher Power which wisely and
justly guides the destinies of humanity.--W. HELM, W.W.S.M., p. 8.
28. Every great artistic achievement of France and Italy since the
time of the Romans can be traced to families and classes with a strong
mixture of German blood, and, especially in earlier times, to the
descendants of Germanic stocks, who had kept their blood, or at any
rate their nature (_Art_) pure.--H.A. SCHMID, D.R.S.Z., No. 25, p. 21.
29. Germany is precisely--who would venture to deny it--the
representative of the highest morality, of the purest humanity, of the
most chastened Christianity. He, therefore, who fights for its
maintenance, its victory, fights for the highest blessings of humanity
itself, and for human progress. Its defeat, its decline, would mean a
falling back to the worst barbarism.--"War Sermons," by PASTOR H.
FRANCKE, quoted in H.A.H., p. 68.
30. No nation in the world can give us anything worth mentioning in
the field of science or technology, art or literature, which we would
have any trouble in doing without. Let us reflect on the inexhaustible
wealth of the German character, which contains in itself everything of
real value that the Kultur of man can produce.--PROF. W. SOMBART,
H.U.H., p. 135.
31. We have in Germany the best Press in the world, and are in that
respect superior to all other countries.--PROF. A.V. HARNACK,
W.W.S.G., p. 19.
32. Germany's fight against the whole world is in reality the battle
of the spirit against the whole world's infamy, falsehood, and
devilish cunning.--"On the German God," by PASTOR W. LEHMANN, quoted
in H.A.H., p. 81.
33. German patriotism strikes its deep roots into the fruitful soil of
a heroic view of the world, and around its crown there gleam the rays
of the highest spiritual and artistic culture.--PROF. W. SOMBART,
H.U.H., p. 71.
34. This combination of clearness of purpose and heroic spirit of
sacrifice was unknown in world-history before August, 1914. Not till
then was the new German human being born.... Is this new creation to
be the human being of the future?--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 103.
35. Verily it has long been an honour and a joy, a source of renown
and of happiness, to be a German--the year 1914 has made it a title
of nobility.--"War Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in H.A.H., p.
133.
36. When Luther, in the domain of religion, characterized as
unevangelical the conception of merit and reward, and energetically
banished the huckster-spirit from religious feeling, he opened to the
German thought the widest possibilities of victory.... A specially
Germanic way of feeling, a Germanic modesty and distinction of
thought, was here powerfully promoted by means of the Gospel. True
distinction is always modest, in the sense of being unobtrusive and
not bragging of deserts!--K. ENGELBRECHT, D.D.D.K., p. 56.
37. Since the great German Renaissance of the new humanism, the
Hellenic has become the truly German.... As the Peloponnesian War
divided the States of Hellas into two camps, so this war has divided
the States of Europe. But this time it will be Athens and her
spiritual power that will conquer.--PROF. A. LASSON, D.R.S.Z., No. 4,
p. 40.
38. After the conclusive victories for which we may confidently hope
... the whole habitable earth will far more than hitherto bend its
gaze upon us, to marvel at (_anzustaunen_) our standard-setting
[artistic] achievements.--G.E. PAZAUREK, P.K.U.K., p. 23.
39. A theory of the origin of species remained in England a series of
isolated observations, which pointed to certain conjectures; in
Germany it was transformed with resolute daring into an all-embracing
whole. PROF. A. LASSON, D.R.S.Z., No. 4, p. 33.
40. Never have ye seen a strong people and Empire in whiter garments
of peace. We offered you palm branches, we offered you justice, ye
offered us envy and hate.--J. HORT, quoted in H.A.H., p. 51.
41. Take heed that ye be counted among the blessed, who show declining
England, depraved Belgium, licentious France, uncouth Russia, the
unconquerable youthful power and manhood of the German people, in a
manner never to be forgotten.--"War Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP,
quoted in H.A.H., p. 131.
42. We may be sure that our French adversaries, when at Metz and St.
Quentin our hosts hurled themselves upon them, saw above us in the
clouds the Germans of 1870, and even the Prussians of 1813, once more
swooping down upon them, and shuddered at the spectacle. And, in spite
of all the boasting of Sir John [Bull], our cousins from beyond the
sea must long ago have recognized that it is better to fight _with_
Prussians against the French, than _vice versa_.--PROF. G. ROETHE,
D.R.S.Z., No. 1, p. 29.
43. He who, in these days, sets forth to defend the German hearth,
sets forth in a holy fight ... in which one stakes life itself, this
single, sweet, beloved life, for the life of a whole nation, a nation
which is God's seed-corn for the future.--"On the German God," by
PASTOR W. LEHMANN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 78.
44. Our enemies are fighting us in order to restore to the world the
freedom, the Kultur, which we threaten. What monstrous mendacity!
Reproduce if you can the German national school teacher, the German
upper-master, the German university professor! You have lagged far
behind us, you are hopelessly inferior! Hence your chagrin, your envy,
your fear! Powerless to rival us, you foam with hate and rage, you
make unblushing calumny your weapon, and would like to exterminate us,
to wipe us off the face of the earth, in order to free yourselves from
your burden of shame.--PROF. A. LASSON, D.R.S.Z., No. 4, p. 38.
45. We take refuge in our quite peculiar idealism, and dream--alas,
aloud!--of our ideal mission for the saving (_Heil_) of mankind.
Foreign countries turn away enraged from such unheard-of
self-glorification and are quite certain that, behind the
high-sounding words, the arrogance of "Prussian militarism" is
concealed.--H. v. WOLZOGEN, G.Z.K., p. 64.
46. The future must lead France once again to our side, we will heal
it of its aberrations, and, in brotherly subordination to us, it may
share with us the task of guiding the fate of the world.... As we feel
ourselves free from hatred toward the kindred Kultur-people of France,
we have taken up the gauntlet with Teutonic pride, and we will use our
weapons so that the admiration of the world, and of our enemies
themselves, shall be accorded to us.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 26.
47. When we were attacked, our German wrath awakened, and when we
could not but recognize in the attack a long-plotted treason against
our love of peace, our wrath became fierce and wild. Then, no doubt,
some of us spoke, in our first excitement, of hatred; but this was a
misinterpretation of our feeling. Seeing ourselves hated, we imagined
that hate must be answered with hate; but our German spirit (_Gemüt_)
was incapable of that passion. Lienhard rightly ... deplores the form
of the popular Hymn of Hate against England, which, characteristically
enough, proceeds from a poet of Jewish race.--H. v. WOLZOGEN, G.Z.K.,
p. 68.
48. Under the protection of the greatest of armies, we have laboured
at scientific, social, and economic progress; our enemies trusted to
the rule of force and to chatter.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 44.
49. Work as untiringly as we, think with as much energy, and we will
welcome you as equals at our side.... Imitate us and we will honour
you. Seek to constrain us by war, and we will thrash you to
annihilation, and despise you as a robber pack.--PROF. A. LASSON,
D.R.S.Z., No. 4, p. 38.
=The Gentle German.=
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
50. The German Army (in which I of course include the Navy) is to-day
the greatest institute for moral education in the world.--H.S.
CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 78.
51. It is true that the breast of every soldier swelled with a noble
pride at the thought that he was privileged to wear the German
uniform, which history has made a garb of honour above all others; but
as for arrogance, not one of them, thank God, was capable of the
stupidity which alone can engender it.--K. ENGELBRECHT, D.D.D.K., p.
32.
52. From all sides testimonies are flowing in as to the noble manner
in which our troops conduct the war.--"War Devotions," by PASTOR J.
RUMP, quoted in H.A.H., p. 124.
52a. We thank our German Army that it has kept spotless the shield of
humanity and chivalry. It is true we believe that every bone of a
German soldier, with his heroic heart and immortal soul, is worth more
than a cathedral.--PROF. W. KAHL, D.R.S.Z., No. 6, p. 5.
52b. We see everywhere how our soldiers respect the sacred
defencelessness of woman and child.--PROF. G. ROETHE, D.R.S.Z., No. 1,
p. 23.
52c. The German soldiers alone are thoroughly disciplined, and have
never so much as hurt a hair of a single innocent human being.--H.S.
CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 69.
53. The depth of the German spirit displays itself also in _respect
for morality and discipline_.... How often, in these days, has the
German soldier been subjected to the temptation to treat the
inhabitants of foreign countries with violence and brutality. But
everywhere he has obeyed the law, and shown that even in war he knows
how to distinguish between the enemy to be crushed and defenceless
women and children. The officials and clergy of conquered territory
have frequently borne express testimony to this fact.--PASTOR M.
HENNIG, D.K.U.W., p. 57.
54. The losses we suffer are--even if the losses of the enemy were ten
times more numerous--infinitely greater in value and infinitely more
painful.--PROF. A. LASSON, D.R.S.Z., No. 4, p. 8.
54a. One single highly cultured German warrior, of those who are, alas!
falling in thousands, represents a higher intellectual and moral
life-value than hundreds of the raw children of nature (_Naturmenschen_)
whom England and France, Russia and Italy, oppose to them.--PROF. E.
HAECKEL, E.W., p. 36.
54b. When one of our ships has to sink, its going-down is even more
glorious than a victory.--PROF. U. v. WILAMOWITZ-MÖLLENDORF, R., pt.
iii., p. 48.
55. Where German soldiers had to seize the incendiary torch, or even
to proceed to the slaughter of citizens, it was only in pursuance of
the rights of war, and for protection in real need. Had they obeyed
the dictates of their hearts, they would rather have shared their soup
and bread with the defenceless foe.... This spirit of humanity we will
preserve and cherish to the end.--PROF. W. KAHL, D.R.S.Z., No. 6, p.
5.
56. Lastly, we must not forget the German humour.... It sometimes
proceeds from a firm faith in God, sometimes from a cheerful optimism,
always from a serenity of spirit which nothing can disturb. Thus
German soldiers out in the field, the moment there is a pause in the
fighting, set about trying to ride on the camel which they have taken
from the Zouaves.... So, too, a non-commissioned officer, during a
fight, admonishes a soldier: "Shoot quietly, Kowalski, shoot quietly!
You'll frighten away the whole French Army of the North with your
confounded banging!"--PASTOR M. HENNIG, D.K.U.W., p. 59.
57. Apart from the fighting quality of these troops, their peaceful
work behind all the fronts bears witness to a thorough spiritual
culture (_Bildung_) and a living organization such as the world has
never seen, and this again indicates an average level of culture in
all grades--of spiritual development and moral responsibility--to
which no people in the world can show anything in the smallest degree
comparable.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, D.Z., p. 19.
58. Even when, for once, a Latin writer is favourably disposed towards
Germany ... he can see in what moves his admiration nothing but animal
vitality. "This terrible Germany," he says, "like a wonderful beast of
the jungle, springs upon all its foes and fixes its fangs in them."
How sadly he here misinterprets the nature of German heroism!--G.
MISCH, V.G.D.K., p. 9.
59. It is characteristic that our cruiser _Wilhelm der Grosse_, in
order to spare the women and children on board, let an English
merchant ship pass unharmed,[9] which by International Law it has the
right to sink ... and then come Messieurs the English and repay this
act of magnanimity by sinking the same cruiser in a neutral harbour,
contrary to all International Law.--PROF. G. ROETHE, D.R.S.Z., No. 1,
p. 23.
60. The absence of any sort of animosity towards other people is a
striking characteristic of the Germans--and of the Germans
alone.[10]--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 12.
_See also No. 497._
=The Great Misunderstood.=
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
61. It has been said that it is un-German to wish to be only German.
That again is a consequence of our spiritual wealth. We understand all
foreign nations; none of them understands us, and none of them can
understand us.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 135.
62. The historian and economist Sombart has said: "We understand all
foreign nations, no foreign nation understands or can understand us."
In these words he rejects all community of Kultur with other peoples,
and especially the so-called "Western European Ideas."--O.A.H.
SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 124.
63. In the world of the spirit, the victory of German thought seemed
already almost decided. For it was able to comprehend the others, but
they could not comprehend it.--G. MISCH, V.G.D.K., p. 19.
64. We are still the most wide-hearted and receptive of people, a
people that cannot live if it does not make its own the spiritual
values of the other peoples. We can already say that we know the outer
world better than they know us.--PROF. F. MEINECKE, D.D.E., p. 35.
65. Whole-hearted understanding for another people can be fully
attained only by treason to one's own nature, to one's own national
personality. That is what makes the renegade so hateful, and those
unpatriotic half-men, the intellectuals and æsthetes.--PROF. M. V.
GRUBER, D.R.S.Z., No. 30, p. 14.
66. The German is docile and eager to learn. His interest embraces
everything, and most of all what is foreign. He is disposed to admire
everything foreign and to underrate what is his own. With foreigners
it is just the other way. We Germans know about them, but they know
absolutely nothing about us.--PROF. A. LASSON, D.R.S.Z., No. 4, p. 34.
67. Apart from what Professor Larsen has said in Denmark, and Dr. Gino
Bertolini in Italy, about German militarism ... we may designate as
nonsense everything that foreigners, in low or in high estate, have
recently said on this subject. This is a new proof of the fact that
foreigners cannot understand us, apart from a few outstanding
personalities whom a kind fate has borne aloft to the heights of the
German spirit.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 82.
_See also Nos. 136-145._
=Kultur.=
(BEFORE THE WAR.)
68. The _Kultur_ of the Germans [_Germanen_] is actually the stimulus
to our present European _Civilization_ with which we are conquering
the world.--J.L. REIMER, E.P.D., p. 31.
69. Germanism, when it rightly understands itself, and remains true to
its nature, is childlike and manlike, at once tender and strong, full
of genuinely human simplicity, and therefore of irreplaceable value to
Kultur.--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 27 (1890).
70. The champions of the so-called race-idea are clear as to the
importance of the Germanic race for our civilization and Kultur....
Their meritorious work has converted the dim divinings of instinct
into the certainty of knowledge; and yet a sense of oppression steals
upon us when we think of what still remains to be done (as they all
agree) against a hostile world in arms, both of the flesh and of the
spirit--a world of treachery and hypocrisy, of error and of
fanaticism, of stupidity and of craft.--J.L. REIMER, E.P.D., p. 50.
70a. Kultur is best promoted when the strongest individual Kultur,
that of a given nation, enlarges its field of activity at the expense
of the other national Kulturs. If we one day come into conflict with
the Martians, then humanity--all the peoples of the earth--will have
common interests: but not until then.--K. WAGNER, K., p. 46.
71. I cannot accept the definition of Kultur which identifies it with
"form," with the harmonious "rhythm" which, in the English, for
example, permeates and unifies everything, from the highest spiritual
life to clothes, footwear and table manners.... I am of opinion that
we shall apply to this care for "form," for "rhythm," and whatever
results from it, the name of "civilization," reserving the nobler word
"Kultur" for higher values, and that we should look to our army and
the corps of officers to endow us with, and educate us in, these
higher values.--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 217 (1901).
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
72. Our belief is that the salvation of the whole Kultur of Europe
depends upon the victory which German "militarism" is about to
achieve.--Manifesto signed by 3,500 "Hochschullehreren" (professors
and lecturers), quoted by PROF. U. v. WILAMOWITZ-MÖLLENDORF, R., pt.
ii, p. 33.
73. If Fate has selected us to assume the leadership in the
Kultur-life of the peoples, we will not shrink from this great and
lofty mission.--G.E. PAZAUREK, P.K.U.K., p. 23.
74. At bottom we Germans are fighting for the same thing which the
Greeks defended against the Persians, the Romans against the
Carthaginians and Egyptians, the Franks against Islam: namely, the
chivalrous European way of thinking, which is ever being threatened by
brutal force and puling baseness. We stand once more at a watershed of
Kultur.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 119.
75. If we are beaten--which God and our strong arm forbid--all the
higher Kultur of our hemisphere, which it was our mission to guard,
sinks with us into the grave.--PROF. A. v. HARNACK, I.M., 1st October,
1914, p. 26.
76. That it will be German Kultur that will send forth its rays from
the centre of our continent, there can be no possible doubt.--PROF. O.
v. GIERKE, D.R.S.Z., No. 2, p. 19.
77. We are indeed entrusted here on earth with a doubly sacred
mission: not only to protect Kultur ... against the narrow-hearted
huckster-spirit of a thoroughly corrupted and inwardly rotten
commercialism (_Jobbertum_), but also to impart Kultur in its most
august purity, nobility and glory to the whole of humanity, and
thereby contribute not a little to its salvation.--EIN DEUTSCHER,
W.K.B.M., p. 40.
78. [Germany has neglected] the highest duty of every Kultur-State--to
carry its Kultur into foreign parts, and to win the confidence and
affection of other peoples.--F. v. LISZT, E.M.S., p. 12.
79. The idea of the exclusive justification of one's own Kultur which
is innate in the French and English, is foreign to us. But we are
conscious of the incomparable value of German Kultur, and will for the
future guard it against being adulterated by less valuable imports.
We do not force it upon any one, but we believe that its own inner
greatness will everywhere procure it the recognition which is its
due.--PROF. O. v. GIERKE, D.R.S.Z., No. 2, p. 25.
80. The more German Kultur remains faithful to itself, the better will
it be able to enlighten the understanding of the foreign races
absorbed, incorporated into the Empire, and to make them see that only
from German Kultur can they derive those treasures which they need for
the fertilizing of their own particular life.--PROF. O. V. GIERKE,
D.R.S.Z., No. 2, p. 19.
81. We will not in the future let foreign idols be forced upon us, but
will serve our own Gods.--PROF. RUDOLF EUCKEN, I.M., 1st October,
1914, p. 74.
82. Germanism was for several decades, in spite of the mighty and
over-towering height of its Kultur, hindered in the imparting of this
Kultur to other nations. In the first years after the war [of 1870]
this was not painfully felt, as a powerful _exchange of Kultur_ was
still in progress between different parts of the German Empire.... But
when this exchange of Kultur between the German stocks had run its
course, and the Germanization of the frontier districts [Poland,
Alsace] had reached its limit, then the spiritual need of the German
victor and conqueror began to make itself felt. He became a teacher
without scholars, he had no longer an audience.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p.
11.
_See also No. 235a._
83. Our German Kultur has, in its unique depth, something shrinking
and severe (_Sprödes und Herbes_), it does not obtrude itself, or
readily yield itself up; it must be earnestly sought after and
lovingly assimilated from within. This love[11] was lacking in our
neighbours; wherefore they easily came to look upon us with the eyes
of hatred.--PROF. R. EUCKEN, I.M., 1st October, 1914, p. 74.
84. And the graves which border the path to glory of the Romans, the
Germans, the British and the French, the stench of robbery, plunder
and theft which hangs around these millions of graves? Must Kultur
rear its domes over mountains of corpses, oceans of tears, and the
death-rattle of the conquered? YES, IT MUST! [There follows an image
too grotesquely indecent to be quoted.] Either one denies altogether
the beneficent effect of Kultur upon humanity, and confesses oneself
an Arcadian dreamer, or one allows to one's people the right of
domination--in which case the might of the conqueror is the highest
law of morality, before which the conquered must bow. _Væ
victis!_--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 10.
85. The whole of European Kultur ... is brought to a focus on this
German soil and in the hearts of the German people. It would be
foolish to express oneself on this point with modesty and reserve. We
Germans represent the latest and the highest achievement of European
Kultur.--PROF. A. LASSON, D.R.S.Z., No. 4, p. 13.
86. The Kultur-mission of a people is fulfilled when there are no
longer any people of the same race and kindred to which their Kultur
has still to be imparted.... Our Kultur-mission has in view some
hundred millions of Slavs, and draws its geographical frontier-line at
the Ural Mountains.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 13.
87. The attempt of Napoleon to graft the Kultur of Western Europe upon
the empire of the Muscovite ended in failure. To-day history has made
us Germans the inheritors of the Napoleonic idea.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W.,
p. 17.
87a. It is perhaps the stupidest of the suspicions under which we
labour that we aim at a world-empire after the Roman fashion, and wish
to thrust our Kultur on the conquered peoples.--PROF. F. MEINECKE,
D.R.S.Z., No. 29, p. 26.
88. We, however, will not let ourselves be diverted by all this hatred
and envy from our striving towards a world-Kultur. We will busily and
cheerfully work on at the elevation of the whole human race.--PROF.
R. EUCKEN, I.M., 1st October, 1914, p. 74.
89. More than a hundred years ago (1808) Johan Gottlieb Fichte, in his
ever-memorable _Speeches to the German Nation_, proclaimed the German
people to be the only people in Europe which had preserved its
primitive genuineness (_ursprüngliche Echtheit_), and therefore its
spiritual creative faculty, and found the transition from his previous
cosmopolitan way of thinking to flaming national enthusiasm, in the
idea that this people was called to be the upholder of world-Kultur,
and that it was therefore its duty to humanity to look to its own
preservation.--PROF O. v. GIERKE, D.R.S.Z., No. 2, p. 23.
90. We claim only the free development of our individuality, and are
only fighting against the attempt to throttle it, while contrariwise
our enemies are conducting an aggressive war, which they have to
disguise as a Kultur-war in order to make it appear defensive.--PASTOR
E. TROELTSCH, D.R.S.Z., No. 27, p. 27.
91. The highest steps of Kultur have not been mounted by peaceable
nations in long periods of peace, but by warlike peoples in the time
of their greatest combativeness.--R. THEUDEN, W.M.K.B., p. 4.
92. German Kultur is moral Kultur. Its superiority is rooted in the
unfathomable depth of its moral constitution. Should it forfeit its
moral purity, it would cease to be German.--PROF. O. V. GIERKE,
D.R.S.Z., No. 2, p. 23.
92a. The further we can carry our Kultur into the East, the more, and
the more profitable, outlets shall we find for our wares. Economic
profit is of course not the main motive of our Kultur-activity, but it
is no unwelcome by-product.--C.L. POEHLMANN, G.D.W., p. 35.
93. The individual Frenchman may fight as heroically as he pleases,
his cause is nevertheless lost, because he does not believe that where
the German element has never penetrated, or has penetrated only to
disappear again, no development of Kultur, in the true sense of the
word, is possible.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 26.
94. But what about Louvain and Rheims? Has not war, the rude and
ruthless destroyer, trodden down glorious cities and priceless
buildings that might claim to rank among the greatest Kultur-treasures
of humanity? Exactly the opposite may be said: war has in these cases
led the way to a really clear recognition of the value to humanity of
these Kultur-treasures! The cry of indignation which went up against
us had long before made itself heard in our own breasts in view of the
thoughtlessness and indifference, nay, the frivolity with which these
immeasurable values had been ruthlessly exposed to destruction by
nations which have always plumed themselves excessively on their
western Kultur.--K. ENGELBRECHT, D.D.D.K., p. 14.
94a. The fury of our gunners at the enemy's unprincipled use of the
cathedral of Rheims as a means of defence, was doubtless mingled with
indignation and disgust at being _compelled_ to do injury to a
priceless work of art. But no phrase-making æstheticism, thank God,
such as our neighbours cultivate, rendered us untrue to the conviction
that, when all is said and done, every drop of blood of the meanest of
our brave soldiers is worth more than any individual work of artistic
Kultur.--K. ENGELBRECHT, D.D.D.K., p. 14.
_See also Nos. 7, 30, 46, 62, 115, 123, 151, 160, 186, 187, 232, 239a,
242, 248a, 262-268._
=Der deutsche Gott.=[12]
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
95. If God is for us, who can be against us? It is enough for us to be
a part of God.--"On the German God," by PASTOR W. LEHMANN, quoted in
H.A.H., p. 77.
96. We have become a nation of wrath; we think only of the war.... We
execute God's Almighty will, and the edicts of His justice we will
fulfil, imbued with holy rage, in vengeance upon the ungodly. God
calls us to murderous battles, even if worlds should thereby fall to
ruins.... We are woven together like the chastening lash of war; we
flame aloft like the lightning; like gardens of roses our wounds
blossom at the gates of Heaven.--F. PHILIPPI, quoted in H.A.H., p. 52.
97. The principle which the Kaiser impressed on his soldiers lives in
his own soul: "Each must so do his duty that, when he shall one day
answer the heavenly bugle-call, he may stand forth with a good
conscience before his God and his old Kaiser."--PASTOR M. HENNIG,
D.K.U.W., p. 21.
_Compare No. 247._
98. Thou who dwellest high in Thy Heaven, above Cherubim, Seraphim,
and Zeppelins, Thou who art enthroned as a God of thunder in the midst
of lightning from the clouds, and lightning from sword and cannon,
send thunder, lightning, hail and tempest hurtling upon our enemy ...
and hurl him down to the dark burial-pits.--_Battle Prayer_, by
PASTOR D. VORWERK, quoted in H.A.H., p. 40.
99. Is the living God, the God whom one can only have and understand
in the spirit of Jesus Christ, is He the God of those others? No; they
serve at best Satan, the father of lies!--"War Sermons," by PASTOR H.
FRANCKE, quoted in H.A.H., p. 72.
100. England is our worst enemy, and we will fight her till we have
overthrown her! So may it please our Great Ally, who stands behind the
German battalions, behind our ships and U-boats, and behind our
blesséd "militarism"!--E. v. HEYKING, D.W.E., p. 23.
101. The German soul is the world's soul, God and Germany belong to
one another.--"On the German God," by PASTOR W. LEHMANN, quoted in
H.A.H., p. 83.
102. On this planet, as a result of millenniums of development, has it
come to this, that Germany--and in a wider sense _Germanism_, within
and without the Empire--has become an instrument of God, an
indispensable, irreplaceable instrument of God? This question I ask,
and I answer it in the affirmative.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, D.Z., p. 15.
103. The French, of course, count on the possibility that Germany may
be weakened in the further course of the war, and at last beaten by
the Russian Army and the English Fleet. This we do not believe,
because we know Germany and hold the alliance between Providence and
our people to be a matter of necessity.--F. NAUMANN, Member of the
Reichstag, D.U.F., p. 19.
104. The difficult Christian commandment, "Love your enemies," is
nowhere more easily obeyed than in war! There is much talk about
"hate" against England. But how do our warriors greet each other?
"Gott strafe England!" They thus invoke God, but not the God of
hatred, of vengeance, but the God of justice. It is the just God at
whose hands we hope for the punishment of the unjust man or
nation.--H. v. WOLZOGEN, G.Z.K., p. 19.
105. It might come to pass that we succumbed in this fight of
righteousness and purity against falsehood and deceit. That could only
happen, I am sure, over the dead body of the last German--but should
it happen, I assert that we should all die happy in the consciousness
of having defended God against the world.--"On the German God," by
PASTOR W. LEHMANN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 79.
106. We are beginning slowly, humbly, and yet with a deep gladness, to
divine God's intentions. It may sound proud, my friends, but we are
conscious that it is also in all humbleness that we say it: the German
soul is God's soul: it shall and will rule over mankind.--"On the
German God," by PASTOR W. LEHMANN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 83.
107. The German God is not only the theme of some of our poets and
prophets, but also a historian like Max Lenz has, with fiery tongue
and in deep thankfulness, borne witness to the revelation of the
German God in our holy war. The German, the national, God!... Has war
in this case impaired, or has it steeled religion? I say it has
steeled it.... This is no relapse to a lower level, but a mounting up
to God Himself.--PROF. A. DEISSMANN, D.R.S.Z., No. 9, p. 16.
108. [Extract from a letter[13] to Chamberlain.] "It is my firm belief
that the country to which God gave Luther, Goethe, Bach, Wagner,
Moltke, Bismarck and William I., has still a great mission before it,
to work for the welfare of humanity. God has put us to a hard
probation ... that we may the better serve as His instrument for the
saving of mankind; for we were on the point of becoming untrue to our
old-established nature (_Wesen_). He who has imposed upon us this
ordeal will also help us out of it."--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, D.Z., p. 13.
109. What a difference is there between armies, one of which carries
its God in its heart, whilst the others think they can conquer by the
weight of their numbers, by cunning tricks of devilish cruelty, by
shameless contempt for the provisions of International Law.--"War
Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in H.A.H., p. 121.
110. Even the Crusaders with their cry of "God wills it!" were not so
penetrated by the Christian spirit as our warriors whose motto is, "As
God will!"--H. v. WOLZOGEN, G.Z.K., p. 19.
111.
Ortelsburg und Gilgenburg,
Dazu als Sieger Hindenburg,
Das sind der Burgen drei,
Die vierte, die ist auch dabei:
Die macht der Feinde Tun zu Spott,
Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott.
Translation: Ortelsburg and Gilgenburg [two places in East Prussia]
with victory for Hindenburg--that makes three "Burgs" in all. Nor is a
fourth "Burg" wanting: one that puts to shame the efforts of our
enemies: for "Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott."--Quoted by M. HENNIG,
D.K.U.W., p. 82.
112. On us Germans the eye of God, we take it, must especially rest in
this war: we must be His ultimate purpose.--"On the German God," by
PASTOR W. LEHMANN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 89.
113. For a just cause, the German is ready to sacrifice life, blood,
gold and goods. Once more, as of old, David goes forth against
Goliath. The German people says with David: "Thou comest to me with a
sword and with a spear and with a javelin; but I come to thee in the
name of the Lord of Hosts," in the name of faith, right and truth.
Great is his might who has these powers on his side; for the living
God stands behind him.--PASTOR M. HENNIG, D.K.U.W., p. 65.
114. The kingdom of God must now assert itself against the kingdom of
all that is base, evil and vile: the kingdom of light against the
kingdom of darkness. Against a world of superhuman evil ... the power
of superhuman justice, truth and love goes out to battle.--"War
Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in H.A.H., p. 125.
115. One thing, I think, is clear, God must stand on our side. We
fight for right and truth, for Kultur and civilization, and human
progress, and true Christianity, against untruthfulness and hypocrisy
and falseness, and un-Kultur and barbarism and brutality. All human
blessings, aye, and humanity itself, stand under the protection of our
bright weapons.--"War Sermons," by PASTOR H. FRANCKE, quoted in H. &.
H., p. 65.
116. There lurks in our people something of the God-consciousness
which inspired the Old Testament prophets. Very childlike indeed, but
of far deeper meaning than he could guess, was the saying of a little
boy to his playmate at the outbreak of war: "I am not in the least
afraid! The good God will help us, for he is German!"--K. ENGELBRECHT,
D.D.D.K., p. 45.
_See also Nos. 43, 145, 312, 316._
=The Chosen People and its Mission.=
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
117. He who does not believe in the Divine mission of Germany had
better hang himself, and rather to-day than to-morrow.--H.S.
CHAMBERLAIN, D.Z., p. 17.
118. Now we understand why the other nations pursue us with their
hatred: they do not understand us, but they are sensible of our
enormous spiritual superiority. So the Jews were hated in antiquity,
because they were the representatives of God on earth.--PROF. W.
SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 142.
119. God has in Luther practically chosen the German people, and that
can never be altered, for is it not written in Romans xi., 29, "For
the gifts and calling of God are without repentance."--DR. PREUSS,[14]
quoted in H.A.H., p. 223.
120. I want first to make it clear in what sense we may say, without
extravagance or the least trace of self-exaltation: Germany is chosen.
Germany is chosen, for her own good and that of other nations, to
undertake their guidance. Providence has placed the appointed people,
at the appointed moment, ready for the appointed task.--H.S.
CHAMBERLAIN, P.I., p. 25.
121. There is a gospel saying which bursts the bonds of its original
historical meaning and takes new wings in the storm of the world-war,
a saying which we may well take as the consecration of our German
mission: "Ye are the salt of the earth! ye are the light of the
world!"[15]--PROF. A. DEISSMANN, D.R.S.Z., p. 24.
122. It is no foolish over-valuation of ourselves, no aggressive
arrogance, no want of humility, when we more and more let Bismarck's
faith prevail within us, that God has taken the German nation under
His special care, or in any case has some special purpose in view for
it.--"On the German God," by PASTOR W. LEHMANN, quoted in H.A.H., p.
86.
123. Then a newly purified and newly strengthened German folk-soul
would arise out of the war, to new thoughts and new deeds, to a new
sense of its world-mission--that of imparting to the other peoples, in
a pure spirit, the achievements of its Kultur, so that all lands may
be filled with the glory of God.--PASTOR M. HENNIG, D.K.U.W., p. 63.
124. As heralds of God's will, messengers of His word, witnesses of
His benefactions to the world, we shall take up our work after the
war, and with German endurance and German industry, with German
competence and German faithfulness, with German faith and German
piety, we shall permeate, in the name of God, a world which has become
poor and desolate.--"War Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in
H.A.H., p. 128.
125. When these storms have done their work, Germany's purest mission
begins: to become a place of refuge, a holy grove for all the seekers
of the earth, a central land, a land of wisdom, a land of morals.--F.
LIENHARDT, quoted in H.A.H., p. 51.
126. The divination or the assurance of this special calling [on the
part of God] has long been present to the best among the German
people; many quotations to this effect (for example, Geibel's lines)
are to-day in everybody's mouth. Deeper thoughts are aroused by a
less-known remark of Richard Wagner's: "A great mission, scarcely
comprehensible to other nations, is unquestionably reserved for the
whole German character (_Anlage_)"; this character he defines as "the
spirit of pure humanity," and the mission of the Germans as "the
ennoblement of the world...." Not to believe in this mission is folly,
is treason.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, D.Z., p. 14.
127. God's people will come forth from this war strengthened and
crowned with victory, because they stand on the side of God; but all
God's adversaries will find out that God will not be mocked, and that
He rules the history of the nations according to His will.--"War
Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in H.A.H., p. 134.
128. A good Providence watches over the fate of the German people,
which is destined to the highest things on this earth.--PROF. W.
SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 67.
129. Brethren and sisters! in a moment we ... have become the heirs of
Israel, the people of the Old Testament covenant. We shall be the
bearers of God's promises.--"War Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted
in H.A.H., p. 116.
130. As was Israel among the heathen, so is Germany among the modern
nations--the pious heart of Europe.--"My German Fatherland," by PASTOR
TOLZIEN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 136.
131. We hope that a great mission will be allotted to us Germans ...
and this German mission is: to look after the world (_zu sorgen für
die Welt_). Is it arrogance to write such a phrase? Is it vanity in
the disguise of a moral idea? No, no, and again no.--PASTOR G. TRAUB,
D.K.U.S., p. 23.
132. Friedrich Nietzsche was but the last of the singers and seers
who, coming down from the height of heaven, brought to us the tidings
that there should be born from us the Son of God, whom in his language
he called the Superman.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 53.
133. Verily the Bible is our book.... It was given and assigned to us,
and we read in it the original text of our destiny, which proclaims to
mankind salvation or disaster--according as _we_ will it!--"War
Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in H.A.H., p. 134.
134. We want to become a world-people. Let us remind ourselves that
the belief in our mission as a world-people has arisen from our
originally purely spiritual impulse to absorb the world into
ourselves.--PROF. F. MEINECKE, D.D.E., p. 37.
135. Germany is the centre of God's plans for the world.--"On the
German God," by PASTOR W. LEHMANN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 78.
_See also Nos. 75, 77, 239._
"=Other Peoples.="
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
136. We had greatly over-valued all other nations, even the French.
The French are a people on the down grade.--THE KAISER, to HERR A.
FENDRICH, quoted in H.A.H., p. 55.
137. All the deep things: courage, patriotism, faithfulness, moral
purity, conscience, the sense of duty, activity on a moral basis,
inward riches, intellect, industry, and so forth [!]--no other nation
possesses all these things in such high perfection as we do.--"On the
German God," by PASTOR W. LEHMANN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 76.
138. Fichte was right in calling us the people of the soul (_Gemüt_)
... [in the sense that] the depth of feeling common to us Germans has
become a power controlling our activity and permeating our history, to
a degree unknown to any other people. In this sense we have a right to
say that we form the soul of humanity, and that the destruction of the
German nature (_Art_) would rob world-history of its deepest
meaning.--PROF. R. EUCKEN, W.B.D.G., p. 23.
139. Bach, Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, these men signify for us a
spiritual rebirth, such as never happens to other peoples, all of whom
only grow old, and can never become young again.--H. V. WOLZOGEN,
G.Z.K., p. 49.
139a. Other peoples are young, grow to maturity and then begin to
age.... We Germans have often been old, but, thank God, we have as
often been _quite_ young.... How young do we not feel ourselves in
contradistinction to these Englishmen and Frenchmen.--PROF. G. ROETHE,
D.R.S.Z., No. 1, p. 25.
140. No other people, not even the Greeks, have so understood
childhood as the Germans. It is we who, in the work of Campe ["The
Swiss Family Robinson"] have created children's literature,[16] and
still hold the lead in that department; it is we who provide the
whole world with children's toys. That is possible only because we
have the power of identifying ourselves with the child-soul, and this
we could not do if we had not in our own innermost soul something
childlike, simple, primitive.--PROF. R. EUCKEN, W.B.D.G., p. 13.
141. The identical ring that we put into the singing of "Ein'feste
Burg ist unser Gott" and "Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles," is
something that cannot be found among the other peoples, because they
lack the freshness of national feeling, because they are
degenerate.--K. ENGELBRECHT, D.D.D.K., p. 68.
142. I look upon it as absolutely the deepest feature of the German
character, this passionate love of right, of justice, of morality.
This is something which the other nations have not got.--"On the
German God," by PASTOR W. LEHMANN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 79.
143. The period of political chaos a hundred years ago was a blessing
for the Germans, who at that time were able to grow deep, while other
nations were growing superficial.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 129.
144. Our German peace is an essential factor in our Kultur. Such a
love of peace is itself of moral value, but in the person of the
Kaiser it finds a consciously religious expression ... and when the
Kaiser has to summon his people to a war which he has not willed,
there at once awakes in the whole people the religious spirit peculiar
to itself, of which the other peoples--unless it be the Turks!--have
no conception, it matters not whether they have already dethroned
"Dieu" or have "the Lord" forever in their mouths!--H. V. WOLZOGEN,
D.Z.K., p. 46.
145. But this same Demon of Baseness, who has subdued the other
peoples, was busily at work in Germany as well: ten years more, and
God would perhaps have found no one in the world to fight for
him.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, D.Z., p. 11.
_See also Nos. 7, 8, 14, 31, 44, 321._
=Christ.=
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
146. The soldier who spat in the face of the thorn-crowned Saviour did
not act more shamelessly than does England now.--"The True Unity," by
PASTOR TOLZIEN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 146.
147. Is there anyone who does not know why England declared war?
Why?... From jealousy. From shopkeeper-spite. Because she wanted to
earn the thirty pieces of silver.--"The World-Politics of England," by
PASTOR G. TOLZIEN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 143.
148. We could draw many instructive parallels: we could say that as
Jesus was treated so also have the German people been treated.--"War
Sermons," by PASTOR H. FRANCKE, quoted in H.A.H., p. 63.
149. In this solemn hour, when we lament over our dead heroes, we
experience, more deeply than ever before, the passion of our Lord....
Is not Germany itself transformed into a suffering Christ? We, too,
have gone through our hour of trial on the Mount of Olives, when with
our Kaiser we prayed that the cup of suffering might pass away from
us; and we, too, obeying the unfathomable will of God, have begun to
drain it.... We, too, were betrayed by those to whom we had shown
nothing but justice and kindness; and around us, too, resounded, in
accents of hatred and envy, the cry of "Crucify him!"--PASTOR F.X.
MÜNCH, reported by SVEN HEDIN, "With the German Armies in the West,"
p. 336.
150. We assert the view that ... what once happened to Luther is now
happening to our people: it is experiencing a repetition of the
Passion of Christ.--DR. PREUSS, quoted in H.A.H., p. 206.
151. A hard and steep _Via Crucis_ lies before the great benefactor
and magnanimous liberator of the Kultur-world, the German people.
Although it looks beyond the gloom of Good Friday to the dawn of
Easter morn, beyond the dark days of war to the beacons of
triumph--yet the cross still rests on its shoulders, and the Golgotha
of the hardest decision still awaits it.--HOFPRÄDIKANT STIPBERGER,
quoted in "False Witness" (_Klokke Roland_), p. 17.
152. It was the hidden meaning of God that He made Israel the
forerunner (_Vordeuter_) of the Messiah, and in the same way He has by
His hidden intent designated the German people to be His
successor.--DR. PREUSS, quoted in H.A.H., p. 214.
153. German craving for truth and German strength of faith, working
along Biblical paths, have attained to the true faith, the pure
religiousness, whose first and greatest spokesman is Jesus Christ.
Thus the Germans are the very nearest to the Lord, and may claim for
themselves that they have "continued His word".... We fight, then, for
Christianity[17] as against degeneration and barbarism.... God must
be with us and victory ours. This is guaranteed us by the truth of our
nature, which is as German as it is Christian.--"War Sermons," by
PASTOR H. FRANCKE, quoted in H.A.H., p. 71.
154. A Jesusless horde, a crowd of the Godless, are in the field
against us.... May God surround us with His protection ... since our
defeat would also mean the defeat of His Son in humanity.--"War
Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in H.A.H., p. 119.
155. The German people, bearing forward in victory the Evangel of the
Cross of Christ,[18] is the great Christophorus in the world of the
nations.--"The Christianity of the Belligerent Nations," by PASTOR F.
ERDMANN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 148.
156. Let us rejoice that Envy has risen up against us; it only shows
that God has exalted and richly blessed us. Think of Him who was
hanged on the Cross and seemed forsaken of God, and had to tread in
such loneliness His path to victory. My German people, even if thy
road be strewn with thorns and beset by enemies, press onward, full of
defiance and confidence.... Thou and thy God, ye are the
majority.--PASTOR D. VORWERK, quoted in H.A.H., p. 38.
157. Kant and Jesus go through our people, seeking their
disciples.--PASTOR G. TRAUB, D.K.U.S., p. 22.
158. We are fighting--thanks and praise be to God--for the cause of
Jesus within mankind.--"War Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in
H.A.H., p. 126.
159. Christianity is possessed of potent spiritual energies, since it
inspires our minds, not only with patience, but also with dignified
pride. "Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you,
and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake." I quite
understand Friedrich Naumann's declaration that this text has meant
much to him in these days.--PROF. A. DEISSMANN, D.R.S.Z., No. 9, p. 24.
160. On the paths of commerce and intercourse, we shall go forth to
all nations, and, after the fierce fight is over, carry Jesus to them
in the quiet, peaceful work of a true Kultur. England, in these paths,
has lowered herself to become a nation of hucksters, who have long
abandoned the service of God for that of Mammon.--"War Devotions," by
PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in H.A.H., p. 130.
161. It is on account of its admirable qualities that Germany has so
many enemies. Friedrich v. Schiller says: "The world loves to blacken
whatever is radiant and shining, and to drag what is exalted in the
dust.... Socrates had to drain the bowl of poison, Columbus was cast
into fetters, Christ was nailed to the cross,"--FELDMARSCHALLEUTNANT
FRANZ RIEGER, quoted by KR. NYROP, _Er Krig Kultur?_ (Copenhagen).
162. The thief who expiated a sinful past by his repentance in the
last hour, and was outwardly subjected to the same suffering as our
Lord, is the type of the Turkish nation, which now puts Christianity
(outside Germany) to shame.--DR. PREUSS, quoted in H.A.H., p. 211.
_See also Nos. 428, 444._
=Die Deutsche Wahrheit (German Truth).=
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
163. The International Lie-Press has risen up as a fourth Great Power
against Germany, and deluges the world with lies against our
magnificent and strictly moral (_sittenstrenges_) Army, and slanders
everything that is German. I propose that in the treaty of peace we
should claim a special milliard as indemnity for lies.[19]--PROF. A.
v. HARNACK, W.W.S.G., p. 4.
164. The Germans demand truth, even from orators. It would be quite
impossible to entangle the Germans in a network of impudent lies, as
the other nations have been entangled.--PROF. A. LASSON, D.R.S.Z.,
No. 4, p. 23.
165. There was no war party in Germany; that is a _Times_ lie; but
there doubtless were responsible statesmen and soldiers who rightly
said: "If England and her gang want war at any price, then the sooner
the better."--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 13.
166. [The sailors of the British Fleet are] a gang of adventurers and
criminals who serve only for filthy lucre ... and among whom
desertions and mutinies belong to the order of the day.--W. HELM,
W.W.S.M., p. 20.
167. I have travelled at midsummer through the length and breadth of
England, from London to Glasgow and Edinburgh, and to Wales; but I
have not seen a single cornfield.--K.L.A. SCHMIDT, D.E.E., p. 29.
168. Not only were the most monstrous untruths as to the violent
proceedings of Germany disseminated by the Press, but care was taken
to suppress all mention of the twice repeated _generous offer of
Germany to compensate Belgium in every respect_, if she would permit
the transit of German troops.--"GERMANUS," B.U.D.K., p. 31.
169. If, apart from one or two acts of rascality (_ein paar
Bubenstreichen_), we have as yet seen nothing of the British Fleet, it
is [among other reasons] because John Bull knows that the crews of his
ships are simply not to be trusted.--W. HELM, W.W.S.M., p. 20.
170. We know, for example, that English prisoners and wounded passing
through [Cologne] ... could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw
that our noble cathedral was not a heap of ruins, as their papers had
assured them!--PROF. A. SCHRÖER, Z.C.E., p. 55.
171. The French soldiers thought they were only going to manoeuvres.
Not until they were face to face with the enemy, had come under the
fire of our rifles and seen our bayonets, did they find out that they
had been deceived, that they had been lied into the war.--"War
Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in H. & H., p. 126.
172. What homage does not the stupid world pay to Carnegie; and now we
learn that, through his endowments for professors and students, he has
enslaved the universities, imposing upon them hard-and-fast doctrines,
as, for example, the worship of England and hostility to
Germany.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, P.I., p. 56.
173. When we [in 1870-71] bombarded the fortress of Paris, that was an
outrage upon a sacred spot. But when the English battered to the
ground the defenceless Alexandria[20]--that was of course quite in
order.--PROF. U. v. WILAMOWITZ-MÖLLENDORF, R., pt. i., p. 27.
173a. When our Zeppelins drop bombs on the fortress of Antwerp, there
are loud protests. But how have not French prisoners boasted of the
burning by their bombs of the open city of Nürnberg. The will was
there; only the power was lacking.[21]--PROF. U. V.
WILAMOWITZ-MÖLLENDORF, R., pt. i., p. 27.
=German Insight and Foresight.=
(BEFORE THE WAR.)
174. [Of the "militia" of the British self-governing Dominions.] They
can be completely ignored so far as concerns any European theatre of
war. [Of the British Territorial Army.] For a Continental European war
it may be left out of account.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 135.
175. As soon as we have won our first victory, we may be sure that
Italy will unconditionally accord us her armed cooperation.--K. V.
STRANTZ, E.S.V., p. 21.
176. If, in case of war, England should join the Dual Alliance
against us, our military position will be in no way prejudiced, if we,
on our side, take care to kindle fires at the points where her
world-power is threatened. In that case, too, oversea prizes beckon us
on, which will be well worth the winning.--K. v. STRANTZ, E.S.V., p.
39.
177. I do not at all believe that Zeppelins have anything to fear from
aeroplanes, as their critics assert.--A. WIRTH, T.O.D., p. 52.
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
178. The far-seeing English politician expects the present war greatly
to improve the position of England as against the United States. Any
injury that England may conceivably inflict on its best customer,
Germany ... will be as nothing in comparison with the direct and
indirect losses the war must inflict on America.--DR. A. ZIMMERMANN,
quoted by P. HEINSICK, W.U.G., p. 21.
179. There can be no possible doubt that England, in secret, heartily
rejoices in every Russian defeat.--P. HEINSICK, W.U.G., p. 21.
=German Freedom.=
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
180. An un-German freedom is no freedom.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p.
21.
180a. Germany has been for centuries the true and only home of a
freedom worthy of humanity and elevating to humanity.--H.S.
CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 15.
181. German freedom is thus not a natural human right, but an
elevation of humanity above the despotism of its own personal
inclinations.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 46.
182. We should be in an evil case if we were to barter for these
[English] "liberties," however praiseworthy in themselves, our
individual many-sidedness, our temperament in constant touch with
life, in short our Deutschtum.--KARL HECKEL, E.B., p. 384.
183. Ah, Milton, wert thou living at this hour!... Thou would'st
understand German championship of freedom, care for justice, and love
of truth.--PROF. A. BRANDL, D.R.S.Z., No. 20.
_On English Freedom, see Nos. 401a, 467._
=The German Language.=
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
184. Fichte expresses in simple words a positively decisive truth ...
of all the languages of Europe, German is the only living one.--H.S.
CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 26.
185. The German ... _must_ conquer; and when once he has
conquered--to-day or in a hundred years...--no duty is more urgent
than that of forcing the German language upon the world.--H.S.
CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 33.
186. If German Kultur and the German spirit are to march victorious
through the world, not to oppress other peoples, but to aid them in
their own development, an essential preliminary will be the spread of
the German language. For only he who knows the German language, and
can read the works of our spiritual heroes in the original, can
really penetrate into the German spirit, and feel himself at home
there.--C.L. POEHLMANN, G.D.W., p. 48.
187. Chance brings to my hands to-day a copy of _Jugend_ for May 28,
1900, containing an article by me in which I read: "I have no firmer
or more sacred conviction than this, that the higher Kultur of
humanity depends upon the spreading of the German language." I go on
to explain that this language is the indispensable interpreter of the
German nature (_Wesen_), which is what I chiefly prize; and for the
spreading of the language it is necessary that the German Empire
should develop into the leading State of the world.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN,
D.Z., p. 9.
188. A defeat for Germany I could regard only as a deferred victory. I
should say to myself: The time, then, is not yet ripe; the sacred
treasure must yet awhile be guarded and cherished in the circle of the
narrower Fatherland. For alone among all nations Germany possesses
to-day a living, developing, sacred treasure.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN,
K.A., p. 24.
189. Germanism (_Was wir "deutsch" nennen_) is the secret through
which the inner man is illuminated; and the instrument of this
illumination is the [German] language.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 25.
190. If Montaigne were living to-day, he would have to remain
silent--or to learn German.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 29.
191. Men must come to realize that whoever cannot speak German is a
pariah.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 35.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] A common expression for the ordinary, average German.
[9] This address was delivered, 9th September, 1914. The _Lusitania_
was sunk 7th May, 1915.
[10] Though this was written in the second month of the war, we must in
fairness assume that Herr Chamberlain is thinking of the German state
of mind before the war. But as he has lived thirty years in Germany he
must have been there during the South African War, when the German
feeling towards England was too mildly described by the term
"animosity."
[11]
And you must love him ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love
[12] M. Dumont, writing of the Albanians (_Rev. des Deux Mondes_, vi.,
120, 1872), supplies a pertinent comment on German piety: "_Ce qui fait
qu'une tribu croit à son dieu, c'est la haine de la tribu voisine._"
[13] Chamberlain says that this letter was addressed to him in
November, 1914, by a correspondent whom he refuses to name, but of whom
he will say that "few men can form such well-informed judgment upon all
phases in the life of present-day Germany, and no one deserves to be
listened to with higher respect." These expressions, and the mention of
William I., may perhaps justify the conjecture that the writer is none
other than Chamberlain's warm admirer, William II.
[14] The same author explains that "of course the German people have
not in themselves deserved this calling: it proceeds from the sheer
grace of God, so we can maintain it without any Pharisaism whatever."
[15] This saying had already "burst its bonds" and been appropriated to
Germany by the Kaiser:--"We are the salt of the earth, but we must also
be worthy to be so." (Bremen, 22nd March, 1905.)
[16] It is odd that the "creator of children's literature" should have
taken the very name of his work from an English book which had been the
delight of children for half a century before he wrote.
[17] Compare with this the following:--"In our struggle with the Triple
Entente, we look for the most valuable aid from Pan-Islamism, from the
living sense of solidarity between all Muslims of the whole world,
dependent on their common religion.... If all accounts be true, the
whole Muslim world is flocking round the Sultan-Kalif, and regards this
war as a 'Holy War,' That would be the first and perhaps the greatest
triumph of the Pan-Islamic movement."--DR. E. HUBER, in _Das Grössere
Deutschland_, Christmas Eve, 1914.
[18] The particular injunction of the Evangel of Christ which inspired
the sinking of the _Lusitania_ was no doubt "Suffer little children to
come unto me."
[19] After making this proposal on p. 4, Professor v. Harnack, on p. 6,
gives the following account of the Battle of the Marne:--"We have,
without any defeat, partly withdrawn our troops to form an iron line of
battle from Arras and Noyon to Verdun."
[20] "The defenceless Alexandria" was defended by an elaborate system
of forts mounting hundreds of guns. It was these forts that the fleet
bombarded, in the face of considerable resistance. The conflagrations
in the city were the work of escaped or liberated convicts.
[21] If any French soldiers actually believed that Nürnberg had been
bombed, it can only have been because the German Government spread the
report, through the mouth of its Ambassador in Paris, as an excuse for
declaring war. (French Yellow Book, No. 159.) It is possible that some
Frenchmen may have incautiously believed the German Government. The
report has been shown by German investigation to be entirely
groundless.
II
GERMAN AMBITIONS
II
GERMAN AMBITIONS
=Expansion in Europe.=
(BEFORE THE WAR.)
192. Germany cannot be suspected of wishing for war.... She covets no
possession of her neighbours. Any one who says that she does, slanders
her.--_Manifesto of the German Defence League, March, 1913._ NIPPOLD,
D.C., p. 85.
192a. A developing, onward-striving people like ourselves requires new
land for its energies, and if peace will not secure it, then only war
remains. To arouse people to a realization of this fact was the
mission of the Defence League.--GENERAL v. WROCHEM, at meeting of
German Defence League, Danzig, March, 1913. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 84.
192b. It is precisely our _craving_ for expansion that drives us into
the paths of conquest, and in view of which all chatter about peace
and humanity can and must remain nothing but chatter.--J.L. REIMER,
E.P.D., p. 154.
193. A new period of progress towards unification is possible only by
means of a great and courageous policy, which should lead to
victorious wars, and if possible to the territorial expansion of the
Empire.--D.B.B., p. 202.
194. All the policy, internal and external, of the Empire ought to be
subordinated to this governing idea--the Germanization of all the
remains of foreign populations within the Empire, and the procuring
for the German people of new territories, proportionate to its
strength and its need of expansion.--PROF. E. HASSE, B.D.V., p. 126.
195. Our frontiers are too narrow. We must become land-hungry, must
acquire new regions for settlement, otherwise we will be a sinking
people, a stunted race. True love for our people and its children
commands us to think of their future, however much they may accuse us
of quarrelsomeness and lust of war. If the Germanic people shrank from
war it would be as good as dead.--BARON V. VIETINGHOFF-SCHEEL, at
meeting of Pan-German League, Erfurt, September, 1912. NIPPOLD, D.C.,
p. 72.
196. Let us bravely organize great _forced migrations_ of the inferior
peoples. Posterity will be grateful to us. We must coerce them! This
is one of the tasks of war: the means must be superiority of armed
force. Superficially such forced migrations, and the penning up of
inconvenient peoples in narrow "reserves," may appear hard; but it is
the only solution of the race-question that is worthy of humanity....
Thus alone can the over-population of the earth be controlled: the
efficient peoples must secure themselves elbow-room by means of war,
and the inefficient must be hemmed in, and at last driven into
"reserves" where they have no room to grow ... and where, discouraged
and rendered indifferent to the future by the spectacle of the
superior energy of their conquerors, they may crawl slowly towards
the peaceful death of weary and hopeless senility.[22]--K. WAGNER, K.,
p. 170.
197. We desire, and must desire ... a world-empire of Teutonic
(_germanisch_) stock, under the hegemony of the German people. In
order to secure this we must--
(a) Gradually Germanize the Scandinavian and Dutch Teutonic
States, denationalizing them in the weaker signification of
the term;[23]
(b) Break up the predominantly un-Teutonic peoples into their
component parts, in order to take to ourselves the Teutonic
element and Germanize it, while we reject the un-Teutonic
element.
--J.L. REIMER, E.P.D., p. 137.
197a. Such false ideas as to nationality, speech and race are now
prevalent ... that it is often maintained that no breaking-up of
nations would be necessary, but that a "Germanization" _in the mass_
of the nations in question [Germany's smaller neighbours] would be
sufficient.--J.L. REIMER, E.P.D., p. 130.
198. We are indubitably the most martial nation in the world.... We
are the most gifted of nations in all the domains of science and art.
We are the best colonists, the best sailors, and even the best
traders! And yet we have not up to now secured our due share in the
heritage of the world.... That the German Empire is not the end but
the beginning of our national development is an obvious truth.--F.
BLEY, W.D., pp. 21-22.
199. We must create a Central Europe which will guarantee the peace of
the entire continent from the moment when it shall have driven the
Russians from the Black Sea and the Slavs from the south, and shall
have conquered large tracts to the east of our frontiers for German
colonization. We cannot let loose _ex abrupto_ the war which will
create this Central Europe. All we can do is to accustom our people to
the thought that this war must come.--P. DE LAGARDE, D.S., p. 83.
200. Before seeking to found a Greater Germany in other continents, we
must create a Greater Germany in Central Europe.... In seeking to
colonize the countries immediately contiguous to our present
patrimony, we are continuing the millenary work of our ancestors.
There is nothing in this contrary to nature.--PROF. E. HASSE, D.G., p.
168.
200a. _Every great people needs new territory_; it must _expand over
foreign soil_; it must expel the foreigners by the power of the
sword.--K. WAGNER, K., p. 80.
201. For this evil [the emigration of the surplus population] we see
only one remedy: _the extension of our frontiers in Europe_.... We
must make room for an Empire of Germanic race which shall number
100,000,000 inhabitants, in order that we may hold our own against
masses such as those of Russia and the United States.--D.B.B., p. 115.
202. [In the Great-German Confederation which will comprise most of
Europe] the Germans, being alone entitled to exercise political
rights, to serve in the Army and Navy, and to acquire landed property,
will recover the feeling they had in the Middle Ages of being a people
of masters. They will gladly tolerate the foreigners living among
them, to whom inferior manual services will be entrusted.--G.U.M., p.
47.
203. The principles which must guide the German people in the
establishment of the new Germanic world-empire are these:--
(1) The strengthening of its Germanic race-foundation.
(2) The securing of room for its surplus of births.
(3) The greatest possible expansion of this surplus over a
portion of the earth which shall be sufficiently large,
various and geographically well-situated to form an economic
unit.
--J.L. REIMER, E.P.D., p. 135.
204. Our own social health, towards which, in the name of our moral
ideals, we are now striving, may one day compel us to force upon other
nations the benefits of the new economic forms.--F. LANGE, R.D., p.
160 (1893).
205. One thing alone can really profit the German people: the
acquisition of new territory. That is the only solid and durable gain
... that alone can really promote the diffusion, the growth and the
deepening of Germanism.--A. WIRTH, O.U.W., p. 56.
206. Excessive modesty and humility, rather than excessive arrogance
and ambition, is a feature of the German character. Therefore we shall
know how to set a limit to our desire for expansion, and shall escape
the dangers which have been fatal to all conquerors whose ambition was
unbridled.--PROF. E. HASSE, W.I.K., p. 63.
206a. The territory open to future German expansion ... must extend
from the North Sea and the Baltic, to the Persian Gulf, absorbing the
Netherlands and Luxembourg, Switzerland, the whole basin of the
Danube, the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor.--PROF. E. HASSE, W.I.K.,
p. 65.
206b. Nowhere in the world is there so much declamation about
Chauvinism as in Germany, and nowhere is so little of it to be found.
We hesitate to express even the most natural demands that a nation can
make for itself.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i.
207. When one wishes a thing, one must effectually will it. Our sense
of justice [!] may in future lead us not to desire what does not
belong to us, but _if_ we take we must also _hold fast_. In other
words, hitherto foreign territory is not incorporated into Germany
until German proprietorship is rooted in the soil.[24]--F. LANGE,
R.D., p. 206 (1893).
208. A people that has increased so much as the German people is
forced to carry on a constant policy of expansion. It must be candidly
confessed that since the retirement of Bismarck the Will to Power had
been lacking.--GENERAL v. LIEBERT, Member of the Reichstag, at meeting
of Pan-German League, Hamburg, January, 1913. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 76.
209. Since the Western Powers restrict our right to life, it is
necessary that we should attach one of them to us or that we should
sweep them out of our way by force.--M. HARDEN, _Zukunft_, 12th
August, 1911.
210. The Rhine ... is a priceless natural possession, although by our
own fault we have allowed its most material value to fall into alien
hands, and it must be the unceasing endeavour of German policy to win
back the mouths of the river.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p. 125.
211. The Jablunka must never hear any language but German, and the
[German] wave must spread thence towards the south until nothing
remains of all the lamentable nationalities of the Imperial State
[Austria].--P. DE LAGARDE, D.S., p. 112.
212. If our area of colonization[25] does not coincide with our
political boundaries, the healthy egoism of our race commands us to
place our frontier-posts in foreign territory, as we have done at
Metz.--PROF. E. HASSE, D.G., p. 166.
213. A sturdy German egoism must characterize all political action....
The first principle of our policy, both at home and abroad, must be
that, in everything that happens, the Germans [literally, the most
German] should come off best, and the others should have a bad time of
it (_sich unbehaglich fühlen_).--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 213 (1893).
213a. A Ministry of Colonization must make up for lost time. With all
prudence, but also with inflexible determination, a process of
expropriation should be inaugurated, by which the Poles and the
Alsatians and Lorrainers would be gradually transported to the
interior of the Empire, while Germans would replace them on the
frontier.--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 206.
=Expansion beyond Europe.=
214. We must ... see to it that the outcome of our next successful war
must be the acquisition of colonies by any possible means.--H.V.
TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p. 119.
215. A German policy of expansion is to-day generally accepted. The
Empire must acquire more colonies.--DR. POHL, of Berlin, at meeting of
Pan-German League, Augsburg, September, 1912. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 72.
216. In all lands under German influence a double power is more or
less strongly at work: the _creative power of the spirit_ ... and the
_creative power of the body_, that is to say, fecundity.... Whither
our spiritual and our bodily fecundity impel us, thither we must
go--_out over the world!_ (_hin über die Welt!_).--J.L. REIMER,
E.P.D., p. 66.
217. The longing for an eternal peace was Utopian and enervating....
Nor was there any lack of a great national aim. At the division of the
earth between the other Great Powers, Germany had gone almost empty
away. But Germany needed new regions for the planting-out of its
ever-growing, inexhaustible wealth of people.--GENERAL V. WROCHEM, at
meeting of the German Defence League, Hanover, February, 1913.
NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 83.
218. With all respect to the rights of foreign nations, it must be
said that Germany has not as yet the colonies which it must have....
Our development demands recognition. That is a natural right. There is
here no question of prestige-politics, of adventurer-politics.
Further, we are not an institute for lengthening the life of dying
States.... Those half-States which owe their existence only to the aid
of foreign weapons, money or knowledge, are hopelessly at the mercy of
the modern States.--_Leipziger Tageblatt_, 24th January, 1913.
NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 51.
219. The Ministry of Colonization must also arrange systematically for
emigration to foreign countries.... The Government alone can, by the
uncompromising (_rücksichtslos_) employment of its methods of power,
conclude treaties ... imposing on [the foreign countries] the
conditions which it regards as desirable.--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 207
(1893).
220. In this nineteenth century, when Germany has become the first
Power in the world, are we incapable of doing what our ancestors did?
Germany must lay her mighty grasp upon Asia Minor.--AMICUS PATRIÆ,
A.U.K., p. 15.
221. The hostile arrogance of the Western Powers releases us from all
our treaty obligations, throws open the doors of our verbal
prison-house, and forces the German Empire, resolutely defending her
vital rights, to revive the ancient Prussian policy of conquest. All
Morocco in the hands of Germany; German cannon on the routes to Egypt
and India; German troops on the Algerian frontier; this would be a
goal worthy of great sacrifices.--M. HARDEN, _Zukunft_, 29th July,
1911.
222. If we do not soon acquire new territory, a frightful catastrophe
is inevitable. It signifies little whether it be in Brazil, in
Siberia, in Anatolia or in South Africa.... To-day, as 2,000 years
ago, when the Cimbri and the Teutons beat at the gates of Rome, a cry
arises ... ever louder and louder, "Give us land, give us new
land!"--A. WIRTH, V.U.W., p. 227.
223. Thanks to our youthfulness and our capacity of development,
thanks also to our military power, many things are possible: we can
create a German nation which shall number 100,000,000 inhabitants, we
can become "Europe," and dominate the seas into the bargain.--D.B.B.,
p. 211.
223a. This Germany of ours was once the greatest of the Sea Powers,
and, God willing, so she will be again.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol.
i., p. 213.
224. "_Civis Germanicus sum--ich bin ein Deutscher!_" As the free
Roman, in his character of _Civis Romanus_, formerly ruled the world,
so must every continental German of to-day, and of the future, rule
the world in his character of _Civis Germanicus_.--J.L. REIMER,
E.P.D., p. 146.
=Weltmacht (World-Dominion).=
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
225. _We want no world-dominion_.... It is unjust, and therefore
un-German.--PROF. W. v. BLUME, D.D.M., p. 23.
225a. Germany, as the preponderant Power in a Great-German League,
will with this war attain world-supremacy.--R. THEUDEN, W.M.K.B., p.
13.
226. We _want_ no hegemony, no world-dominion! Such ambitions mean
everlasting war; whereas Germany sincerely desires peace, and the
influence which shall enable her to establish it.--PROF. DR. R.
JANNASCH, W.D.U.S., p. 22.
226a. Formerly German thought was shut up in her corner, but now the
world shall have its coat cut according to German measure, and as far
as our swords flash and German blood flows, the circle of the earth
shall come under the tutelage of German activity.--"World-Germany," by
F. PHILIPPI, quoted in H.A.H., p. 43.
227. We were contented within our boundaries. Not a single foot did we
want of the countries adjoining our frontiers. PROF. U. V.
WILAMOWITZ-MÖLLENDORF, R., pt. i., p. II.
227a. Before everything, however, we must see to the provision of
agricultural land! _We require more soil for settlement_.... And we
require unsettled land for settlement. No alien fellow-citizens!--PROF.
M. v. GRUBER, D.R.S.Z., No. 30, p. 27.
228. With us shall right and morality, truth and faithfulness, win the
fight against wrong and baseness, malice and falsehood. Through our
supremacy (_Vorherrschaft_), which we hope will be the outward result
of this war, God will establish His dominion over the many-coloured
throng of the nations who stand against us.--"War Devotions," by
PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in H.A.H., p. 128.
229. Not through a chaotic conflict of ideas, but only through unity
of conviction, can a world-ruling Germany arise; and if Germany does
not rule the world (I do not mean through her power alone, but through
her all-sided superiority and moral weight) then she will disappear
from the map; it is a case of "Either--or."--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, P.I.,
p. 39.
230. Not one of our Pan-German leaders, whose plans are to-day being
realized on the battlefields, received honour or recognition at the
hands of the German monarchs, for whose honour and glory we had
suffered and fought.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 6.
231. If we set ourselves to multiply, as we did in the first five
years of this century, then the German people would in 1950 number 118
millions, and in the year 2000, 250 millions. Then we could face the
future with considerably more confidence.--PROF. M. V. GRUBER,
D.R.S.Z., No. 30, p. 25.
232. Germany--of this I am convinced--may in less than two centuries
succeed in dominating (_beherrschen_) the whole globe (_Erdkugel_), in
part directly and politically, in part indirectly, through language,
methods and Kultur, if only it can in time strike out a "new course,"
and definitely break with Anglo-American methods of government, and
with the State-destroying ideals of the Revolution.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN,
P.I., p. 88.
233. If every representative, rising to the height of the great time
in which he lives, will put away from him all pettiness of spirit ...
we shall be an unconquerable people, capable of ruling the
world.--C.L. POEHLMANN, G.D.W., p. 11.
234. Where self-interest ends the real patriotism begins; and its
measure is not the loud chest-note of conviction, but self-sacrificing,
untiring work in the service of the community, in order gradually to
win for the German nature (_Wesen_) the first place in the
world.--PROF. G.E. PAZAUREK, P.K.U.K., p. 5.
235. Just such a systematic transformation of the world as Augustus
effected, Germany must now undertake--but on how much nobler a
plan!--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 42.
235a. Germany will be the schoolmaster of all the world, as every
German has a bit of the schoolmaster in him.--PROF. W. V. BLUME,
D.D.M., p. 25.
_Compare No. 82._
236. The war must last until we have forced disarmament upon our
enemies. There is a nursery rhyme which runs thus:--
Knife and scissors, fork and candle,
Little children must not handle.
Since the enemy States behave so childishly as to misuse their arms,
they must be placed under tutelage. Moreover, our enemies have acted
so dishonourably that it is only just that rights of citizenship
should be denied them.... When they can no longer bear arms, they
cannot make any new disturbances.--O. SIEMENS, W.L.K.D., p. 47.
237. We must establish ourselves firmly at Antwerp on the North Sea
and at Riga on the Baltic.... At all events we must, at the conclusion
of peace, demand _substantial expansions of the German Empire_. In
this our motive will not be the greed and covetousness of world-ruling
England, nor the national vanity of _gloire_-seeking France, nor the
childish megalomania of Rome-mad Italy, nor the insatiable craving for
expansion of semi-barbarous Russia.--PROF. E. HAECKEL, E.W., p. 122.
238. We could not but say to ourselves, "If once it comes to war with
England, it will be difficult for us to get at her in her island. It
will be easier to strike at her in Egypt [which the writer elsewhere
describes as the keystone of the arch of the British Empire]. But to
that end we require an alliance with the Turks." ... Therefore Germany
sent officers to instruct the Turkish Army, therefore the Emperor went
in 1898 to Constantinople and Jerusalem and made his famous speech as
to the friendship between Germany and the Mohammedans. Therefore we
built the Bagdad Railway with German money.--P. ROHRBACH, W.W.R., p.
12.
239. _Noblesse oblige_.... The idea that we are the chosen people
imposes on us heavy duties, and duties only.... We are not out to
conquer the world. Have no fear, my dear neighbours, we will not
devour you.... Should it be necessary to increase our territory in
order that the greater body of the people may have room to develop,
then in that case we shall take as much land as may appear to be
necessary. We will also plant our foot where it appears important on
strategic grounds that we should do so, in order to maintain our
impregnable strength. Thus, if our position of strength in the world
will gain by it, we will establish stations for our fleet, for
example, in Dover, Malta and Suez. Beyond this we will do nothing. We
have not the least desire to expand, for we have something more
important to do.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H, p. 143.
239a. We trust that the German Eagle, when with one wing he has
scourged the barbarians back into Asia, and with the other has freed
himself from unworthy chains, will soar high over the oceans ... where
his wings can grow and he can stretch them according to his needs. And
we hope that this strong, united, purified Germany will be a fountain
of rejuvenescence to the ageing Kultur of Europe.--PROF. G. ROETHE,
D.R.S.Z., No. 1, p. 31.
_See also Nos. 7, 84._
FOOTNOTES:
[22] It is only right to state that the author urges this spirited
policy, not upon his countrymen alone, but upon the "Germanoid" races
at large. The "inefficient" peoples whom he has specially in view are
the non-German populations of South America, whom he proposes to deport
to "reserves" in Africa!
[23] The author has previously defined two grades of denationalization.
The second or weaker grade includes the substitution of German for the
national language. For the diabolical means by which he proposes to
secure the extinction of "undesired and enslaved races," see E.P.D., p.
159.
[24] That is, until the original landowners are forcibly expropriated.
[25] It is not quite clear what the Professor means by
"colonization"--but it does not greatly matter.
III
WAR-WORSHIP
III
WAR-WORSHIP
=The Lust of Battle.=
(BEFORE THE WAR.)
240. How often, in such a charge [during manoeuvres] has my ear caught
the yearning cry of a comrade tearing along beside me: "Donnerwetter,
if this were only the real thing!" (_wenn das doch Ernst
wäre_).--KRONPRINZ WILHELM, D.I.W., Chapter II.
240a. When the Gordian knot is ready to be cut, God sends the
Alexander! Does not the Crown Prince William's confession of his
belief in courage as the highest flower of the human spirit, in his
book "Deutschland in Waffen," sound like an answer to the longing that
thrills through our whole people?--_Deutsche Tageszeitung_, 5th May,
1913. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 34.
241. In philosophic form, the idea of the beneficence of war may be
traced back to the saying of Heraclitus, "_polemos patêr pantôn_" [war
is the father of everything].... War is held to be a divine
institution, a law of the universe, present in all nature; not for
nothing do the Indians worship Siva the Destroyer; the warrior is
filled with the enthusiasm of destruction; wars purify the atmosphere
like thunderstorms....[26] We may here refer to H. Leo's phrase as to
the "fresh and joyous war that shall sweep away the scrofulous rabble"
[_vom "frischen und fröhlichen Krieg, der das skrofulöse Gesindel
wegfegen soll."_].--J. BURCKHARDT, W.B., p. 163.
242. The Kaiser may have thought that war was not necessary ...
because every year of peace increased the power of the Empire, and
because the German hegemony in Europe was safe enough without shedding
a drop of blood. To this one may reply that the noblest weapon rusts
if its use is too long restricted to reviews and parades ... and that
every ascent to a higher mental Kultur impairs the barbaric energy of
warriors, and encumbers them with scruples which damp their joyous
courage.--M. HARDEN, _Zukunft_, 19th August, 1911.
=War and Religion.=
243. It is no mere chance that the earliest piece of poetry, the
oldest three distiches of the Old Testament, the Song of Lamech, is a
song of triumph over the invention of the sword. (Genesis, iv., 23):--
Ada and Zillah hear my voice;
Ye wives of Lamech hearken unto my speech:
For I have slain a man for wounding me,
And a young man for bruising me:
If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,
Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.
--E. v. LASAULX, P.G., p. 85.
244. Perpetual peace is a dream, and it is not even a beautiful dream:
war forms part of the eternal order instituted by God.... Without war
humanity would sink into materialism.--COUNT V. MOLTKE, letter to
Bluntschli, 11th December, 1880.
245. To appeal from this judgment to Christianity would be sheer
perversity, for does not the Bible distinctly say that the ruler shall
rule by the sword, and, again, that greater love hath no man than to
lay down his life for his friend?--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p.
67.
245a. But it is not worth while to speak further of these matters, for
God above us will see to it that war shall always recur, as a drastic
medicine for ailing humanity.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p. 69.
246. Christian morality is based, indeed, on the law of love. "Love
God above all things, and thy neighbour as thyself." This law can
claim no significance for the relations of one country to another,
since its application to politics would lead to a conflict of
duties.... Christ himself said: "I am not come to send peace on earth,
but a sword." His teaching can never be adduced as an argument against
the universal law of struggle. There never was a religion which was
more combative than Christianity.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 29.
247. When here on earth a battle is won by German arms and the
faithful dead ascend to Heaven, a Potsdam lance-corporal will call the
guard to the door, and "old Fritz," springing from his golden throne,
will give the command to present arms. That is the Heaven of Young
Germany.--_Weekly Paper for Young Germany_, January 25, 1913.
_Compare "God and the old Kaiser" No. 97._
=War and Ethics.=
248. Nothing is more immoral than to consider and talk of war as an
immoral thing. "War is the mother of all good things" (Empedocles)....
And there is nothing more moral than the collective egoism, the
self-conserving instinct, of nations.--PROF. E. HASSE, Z.D.V., p. 127.
248a. The idea of war is the child of _healthy egoism_, which is
honest to the marrow of its bones, is ashamed of nothing in
Nature.... but is the basis of all Kultur, of all morality.--K.
WAGNER, K.
249. We must therefore reckon with war as a necessary factor towards
higher development.... A people really learns to know its full
national strength only in war ... only then, indeed, does its full
strength come into existence.--J. BURCKHARDT, W.B., p. 162.
249a. War makes room for the competent at the expense of the unsound.
War is the source of all good growth. Without war the development of
nations is impossible--K. WAGNER, K., p. 183.
250. The sight of blood and wounds steels the nerves of the soul, the
horrors of war stimulate the spirits, so that instead of the falsehood
and cowardice of enervation, the old heroic virtues are restored ...
fear of God, martial bravery, obedience, up-rightness of mind,
constancy, truth ... manlike courage, manly pity, and all that is
great and good in humanity.--E. v. LASAULX, P.G., p. 86.
_Compare Nos. 254, 311._
251. The brutal incidents inseparable from every war vanish completely
before the idealism of the main result.... Strength, truth and honour
come to the front and are brought in to play.--GENERAL V. BERNHARDI,
G.N.W., p. 27.
252. War is the most august and sacred of human activities.... For us,
too, the great, joyful hour of battle will one day strike.... The
openly expressed longing for war often degenerates into vain boasting
and ludicrous sabre-rattling. But still and deep in the German heart
must the joy in war and the longing for war endure.--OTTO VON
GOTTBERG, in _Weekly Paper for the Youth of Germany_, 25th January,
1913. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 1.
253. Life as the most necessary medium of Kultur--that is the ground
on which the modern apostles of peace take their stand.... But our
German morality makes short work of all such rubbish. It says with
Moltke: "Eternal peace is only a dream, _and not even a beautiful
dream_!" No, certainly not beautiful, for a peace which could no
longer look forward to war as the issue even of the worst
complications would poison and rot away our inmost heart, until we
became loathsome to ourselves.--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 157 (1893).
254. Whosoever has crossed a great battlefield and has shuddered in
the depths of his soul at all the horrors confronting him, will have
found new strength and exaltation in the thought that here the whole
tragic gravity of military necessity is regnant, and here a
justifiable passion has done its work.--GENERAL v. HARTMANN, D.R.,
XIV., p. 84.
255. The appeal to arms will be valid until the end of history, and
therein lies the sacredness of war.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p.
29.
_See also No. 314._
=War and Biology.=
256. We children of the future ... do not by any means think it
desirable that the kingdom of righteousness and peace should be
established on the earth.... We rejoice in all men who, like
ourselves, love danger, war and adventure ... we count ourselves among
the conquerors; we ponder over the need of a new order of things, even
of a new slavery--for every strengthening and elevation of the type
"man" also involves a new form of slavery.--FR. NIETZSCHE, J.W.,
section 377.
257. Unless we choose to shut our eyes to the necessity of evolution,
we must recognize the necessity of war. We must accept war, which will
last as long as development and existence; we must accept eternal
war.--K. WAGNER, K., p. 153.
258. "War is the father of everything," says Heraclitus. It will be
the father of the new German race of the future.--PROF. E. HASSE,
Z.D.V., p. 126.
259. The efforts directed towards the abolition of war must not only
be termed foolish, but absolutely _immoral_, and must be _stigmatized
as unworthy of the human race_.... The weak nation is to have the same
right to live as the powerful and vigorous nation! The whole idea
represents a presumptuous encroachment on the natural laws of
development.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 34.
260. It is proved beyond all shadow of doubt that regular war (_der
regelrechte Krieg_) is, not only from the biological and true kultural
standpoint, the best and noblest form of the struggle for existence,
but also, from time to time, an absolute necessity for the maintenance
of the State and society.--DR. SCHMIDT, of Gibichenfels, at meeting of
Pan-German League, Berlin, October, 1912. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 73.
261. War is a biological necessity of the first importance, a
regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed
with.... "War is the father of all things." The sages of antiquity,
long before Darwin, recognized this.... "To supplant or to be
supplanted is the essence of life," says Goethe, "and the strong life
gains the upper hand."--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 18.
_See also No. 386._
=War and Kultur.=
262. It is nothing but fanaticism to expect very much from humanity
when it has forgotten how to wage war. For the present we know of no
other means whereby the rough energy of the camp, the deep impersonal
hatred, the cold-bloodedness of murder with a good conscience, the
general ardour of the system in the destruction of the enemy ... can
be as forcibly and certainly communicated to enervated nations as is
done by every great war. Kultur can by no means dispense with
passions, vices and malignities.--FR. NIETZSCHE, H.T.H., section 477.
263. It is here demonstrated with rare cogency and conclusiveness that
war is not only a factor, but the main factor, in true, genuine
Kultur--not only its creator but its preserver.... Although the author
thus recognizes war as an element in the divine world-order, he by no
means ignores the blessings of peace, as the second factor in true,
genuine Kultur, in a certain measure complementary to war.--_Berliner
neueste Nachrichten_, 24th December, 1912, in review of _Der Krieg als
Kulturfaktor_, by DR. SCHMIDT, of Gibichenfels. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 20.
264. No sooner are airships invented than the General Staffs set to
work to devise methods of applying them to destruction.... Thus every
achievement of "Kultur"[27] and of the human intelligence is only a
means to more barbarous processes of war: and yet the pacifists see in
the progress of the human intelligence a guarantee of world-peace!--L.
GUMPLOWICZ, S.I.U., p. 161.
265. I must first of all examine the aspirations for peace, which seem
to dominate our age and threaten to poison the soul of the German
people.... I must try to prove that war is not merely a necessary
element in the life of nations, but an indispensable factor of Kultur,
in which a truly civilized nation finds the highest expression of
strength and vitality.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 14.
266. If the Twilight of the Gods that has now so long brooded over
the European race and Kultur is at last to vanish before the light
of morning, then we Germans in particular must no longer see in war
our destroyer ... but must recognize in it our healer, our
physician.--_Tägliche Rundschau_, 12th November, 1912. NIPPOLD, D.C.,
p. 23.
267. Our own country, by employing its military powers, has attained a
degree of Kultur which it never could have reached by the methods of
peaceful development.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 119.
268. War is to us only a means, but the state of preparation for war
is more than a means, it is an end.--PROF. E. HASSE, Z.D.V., p. 126.
_See also Nos. 84, 91._
=Blood and Iron.=
269. The time for petty politics is past; the next century[28] will
bring the struggle for the dominion of the world--the _compulsion_ to
great politics.--FR. NIETZSCHE, B.G.E., section 208.
270. I greet all the signs indicating that a more manly and warlike
age is commencing, which will, above all, bring heroism again into
honour!--FR. NIETZSCHE, J.W., section 283.
271. General Keim from Berlin insisted that the path to German unity
and power was not paved with sealing-wax, printers' ink and
parliamentary resolutions, but marked by blood, wounds and deeds of
arms. States could be maintained only by the means by which they were
created.--At meeting of Pan-German League, Augsburg, September, 1912.
NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 72.
272. It is only since the last war [1870] that a sounder theory has
arisen of the State and its military power. Without war no State could
be.... War, therefore will endure to the end of history, so long as
there is multiplicity of States.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p.
65.
273. We owe it to Napoleon ... that several warlike centuries, which
have not had their like in past history, may now follow one
another--in short, that we have entered upon _the classical age of
war_, war at the same time scientific and popular, on the grandest
scale (as regards means, talents and discipline) to which all coming
millenniums will look back with envy and awe as a work of
perfection--for the national movement out of which this martial glory
springs, is only the counter-_choc_ against Napoleon, and would not
have existed without him. To him, consequently, one will one day be
able to attribute the fact that man in Europe has again got the upper
hand of the merchant and the Philistine.--FR. NIETZSCHE, J.W., section
362.
274. What men tower highest in the history of the nation, whom does
the German heart cherish with the most ardent love? Goethe? Schiller?
Wagner? Marx? Oh, no--but Barbarossa, the great Frederick, Blücher,
Moltke, Bismarck, the hard men of blood. It is to them, who offered
up thousands of lives, that the soul of the people goes out with
tenderest affection, with positively adoring gratitude. Because they
did what now we ought to do.... Our holiest raptures of homage are
paid to these Titans of the Blood-Deed.--DR. W. FUCHS, in article on
"Psychiatrie and Politics," in _Die Post_, 28th January, 1912.
NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 2.
275. I must assert with emphasis that the cardinal sin of our whole
policy has hitherto been that we have lost sight of the eternal truth:
POLITICS MEAN THE WILL TO POWER.... The history of the world teaches
us that only those people have strongly asserted themselves who have
without hesitation placed the Will to Power higher than the Will to
Peace.--GENERAL KEIM, at meeting of Central Committee of Pan-German
League, Munich, April, 1913. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 77.
276. 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.... 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.... 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.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 256.
277. War does not depend on the human will, but is for the most part
an ineluctable, elementary happening, a dæmonic power forcing itself
upon us, against which all written treaties, all peace conferences and
humanitarian agitations, come pitifully to wreck.--GENERAL KEIM, at
meeting of the German Defence League, Cassel, February, 1913. NIPPOLD,
D.C., p. 82.
=War Necessary to Germany.=
278. If the health and life of Germany require this mortal and
terrible remedy [war], _let us not hesitate to apply it_, so be it!
God is the Judge. I accept the awful responsibility.... God never
forsakes a good German.--"AMICUS PATRIÆ," A.U.K., p. 15.
278a. Whoever loves his people and wishes to hasten the crisis of the
present sickness, must yearn for war as the awakener of all that is
good, healthy and strong in the nation.--D. FRYMANN, W.I.K.W., p. 53.
279. The duties and obligations of the German people ... cannot be
fulfilled without drawing the sword.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p.
15.
280. It is for social as much as for national and political reasons
that we must fix our minds incessantly upon war; may the first ten or
twenty years of the twentieth century bring it to us, for we have need
of it!--D.B.B., p. 191.
281. It must be regarded as a quite unthinkable proposition that an
agreement between France and Germany can be negotiated before the
question between them has been once more decided by arms.--GENERAL V.
BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 91.
282. In one way or another _we must square our account with France_ if
we wish for a free hand in our international policy.... France must be
so completely crushed that she can never again come across our
path.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 105.
283. A pacific agreement with England is a will-o'-the-wisp which no
serious German statesman would trouble to follow. We must always keep
the possibility of war with England before our eyes, and arrange our
political and military plans accordingly.--GENERAL V. BERNHARDI,
G.N.W., p. 99.
284. Since the struggle is, as appears on a thorough investigation of
the international question, necessary and inevitable, we must fight it
out, cost what it may.... We have fought in the last great wars for
our national union and our position among the Powers of _Europe_; we
must now decide whether we wish to develop into and maintain a _World
Empire_, and procure for German spirit and German ideas that fit
recognition which has been hitherto withheld from them.--GENERAL V.
BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 103.
285. If we wish to compete further with them [the other Powers] a
policy which our population and our civilization both entitle and
compel us to adopt, we must not hold back in the hard struggle for the
sovereignty of the world.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 79.
285a. All that other nations attained in centuries of natural
development--political union, colonial possessions, naval power,
international trade--was denied to our nation until quite recently.
What we now wish to attain must be _fought for_, and won, against a
superior force of hostile interests and powers.--GENERAL V. BERNHARDI,
G.N.W., p. 84.
286. Since almost every part of the globe is inhabited, new territory
must, as a rule, be obtained at the cost of its possessors--that is to
say, by conquest, which thus becomes a law of necessity.--GENERAL v.
BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 21.
287. Success is necessary to gain influence over the masses, and 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.... 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.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 258.
=War need not be Defensive.=
288. Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say unto
you, it is the good war which halloweth every cause.--FR. NIETZSCHE,
Z., "War and Warriors."
289. We must not think merely of external foes who compel us to fight.
A war may seem to be forced upon a statesman by the condition of home
affairs, or by the pressure of the whole political situation.--GENERAL
v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 38.
290. The moral duty of the State towards its citizens is to begin the
struggle while the prospects of success and the political
circumstances are still tolerably favourable. When, on the other hand,
the hostile States are weakened or hampered by affairs at home and
abroad, but its own warlike strength shows elements of superiority, it
is imperative to use the favourable circumstances to promote its own
political aims.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 53.
291. The lessons of history confirm the view that wars which have been
deliberately provoked by far-seeing statesmen have had the happiest
results.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 45.
_See also No. 382._
=Contempt for Peace.=
292. Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars--and the short peace
more than the long.--FR. NIETZSCHE, Z., "War and Warriors."
292a. Only over the black gate of the cemetery ... can we read the
words, "Eternal peace for all peoples." For peoples who live and
strive, the only maxim and motto must be Eternal War.--K. WAGNER, K.,
p. 217.
293. The reception of the Tsar's [Peace] Manifesto was anything but
friendly.... The learned world, also, was for the most part hostile to
the idea underlying the Manifesto, and such a man as Mommsen could
even, amid great applause, characterize the proposed Conference as "a
misprint in world-history."--A.H. FRIED, H.D.F., Vol. I., p. 205.
294. The German who loves his people, and believes in the greatness
and the future of our home ... must not let himself be lazily sung to
sleep by the peace-lullabies of the Utopians.--KRONPRINZ WILHELM,
D.I.W., Chapter I.
295. A long peace not only leads to enervation, but allows of the
existence of a multitude of pitiful, trembling miserable-creatures
[_Notexistenzen_] ... who cling fast to life with loud cries about
their "right" to exist, block the way for real strength, make the air
foetid, and altogether defile the blood of the nation. War brings
real strength into honour again.--J. BURCKHARDT, W.B., p. 164.
296. Let us laugh with all our lungs at the old women in trousers who
are afraid of war, and therefore complain that it is cruel and
hideous. No, war is beautiful. Its august grandeur elevates the heart
of man high above all that is commonplace and earthly.--O. V.
GOTTBERG, in _Weekly Paper for the Youth of Germany_, 25th January,
1913. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 2.
297. Efforts to secure peace are extraordinarily detrimental to the
national health so soon as they influence politics.--GENERAL V.
BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 28.
298. People are too much given to sentimental maunderings. To what
practical end had the vaunted Hague Peace Meetings led? The 100,000
marks spent on the Peace Palace would much better have been devoted to
the support of needy veterans.--GENERAL KEIM, at meeting of the German
Defence League, Cassel, February, 1913. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 82.
299. The worst of hypocrisies is the participation by Germany in the
Hague Conference.... We should do better to leave that farce to those
who, for centuries, have made of hypocrisy an industry and a
habit.--PROF. E. HASSE, Z.D.V., p. 132.
300. We can, fortunately, assert the impossibility of these efforts
after peace ever attaining their ultimate object in a world bristling
with arms, where a healthy egoism still directs the policy of most
countries.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 36.
301. The so-called world-peace is not order, but chaos. It means in
the first place the forcible dominion of capitalists and the
proletariat [!] over the productive powers of the nations, and lastly,
in the struggle of all against all, a return to those prehistoric
conditions out of which, in the opinion of our "cosmopolitans," all
our culture took its rise.--_Der Reichsbote_, 14th March, 1913.
NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 26.
302. A people of parasites like the Jews strives, with all the
instincts of its craving for power and for wealth, towards the
abolition of war, for if that could be effected its work of
disintegrating the living bodies of the nations could go on
unhindered.--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 158 (1893).
303. As for the whinings of M. de Bloch and Frau v. Suttner with
regard to the horrors of modern war, they are imbecilities to which we
can make a statistical answer. Statistics prove that two years of
peace cost Germany more violent deaths (suicides, accidents, murders)
than the whole war of 1870-71 cost us--that war without
parallel.[29]--D.B.B., p. 206.
304. Sentimental maunderings about humanity and peace were bringing us
face to face with the danger that cosmopolitanism might overshadow
Germanism, and that the Nobel Prize might actually be offered to our
Kaiser.--EXCELLENZ v. WROCHEM, at meeting of Pan-German League,
Augsburg, September, 1912. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 72.
_See also Nos. 217, 244, 253, 314, 316, 317, 319._
=Militarism Exultant.=
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
305. I have lived for forty-five years mainly in the society of
Germans, and thirty years exclusively in German countries ... and my
testimony is this: _in the whole of Germany there has not been for the
past forty-three years a single man who has wished for war--not one_.
Whoever denies this, lies.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 11.
305a. It is only in war that we find the action of true heroism, the
realization of which on earth is the care of militarism. That is why
war appears to us, who are filled with militarism, as in itself a holy
thing, as the holiest thing on earth.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p.
88.
306. Every age requires its war, lest civilization stagnate.--O.A.H.
SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 116.
307.
Bestir you, my comrades! To horse, to horse!
And away to the field and to freedom....[30]
Truly a splendid song. It thrills through all our muscles, and makes
us feel as though we ourselves would like once more to take our share
in a joyous fight.--PROF. U. v. WILAMOWITZ-MÖLLENDORF, pt. I., p. 4.
_Compare No. 241._
308. Anti-militarism was enraptured. What we had laboriously built up
through the cultivation of the warlike spirit sank to ruins.... God be
eternally praised! The great masses of the people would have nothing
to say to these doctrines of the evil of war.... It appeared as clear
as daylight that we had always been right, and that the warlike
spirit, that deepest and purest joy of the great heart of our people,
was unshaken and unchanged. The warlike spirit, the love of war and
the craving for battle, was no imaginary characteristic of our
people--no, and a thousand times no!--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 7.
309. The tempest of patriotic exaltation is sweeping through the
German land, and Treitschke's solemn pronouncement as to war being a
fountain of health for the people has all of a sudden risen into
renewed estimation. The war has swept the tedious patience-game of the
diplomats off the table and set the brazen dice of the battlefield
rolling in its stead.--F. v. LISZT, E.M.S., "Geleitwort," p. 1.
310. Our long years of peace, full of honest, but, alas! also of
dishonest, work, had brought us no blessing. We breathed again when
the war came.--H. v. WOLZOGEN, G.Z.K., p. 61.
311. Over the blood of the fallen glows the flame of poetic
enthusiasm. A war without dead and wounded is a life without work,
without aim and without hope.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 7.
_Compare Nos. 250, 254._
312. When the summons to war rang out, in thousands and thousands of
families people searched the Holy Scriptures, to know what was God's
message for the event of war; and the dear Bible-Book, which never
leaves us in the lurch, brought to the searcher strength, counsel and
consolation. The Old Testament, under-valued by many, now became, all
of a sudden, the book for everyday reading.--PASTOR M. HENNIG,
D.K.U.W., p. 5.
313. The order in which the nations take rank cannot be determined in
time of peace, by standards of reason, not only because the majority
of overfed ruminants would always keep the Lion encaged, but because
only in war can the Lion prove his lionlikeness to others, and--what
is still more important--to himself.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 3.
314. [Materialism and millionairism were playing havoc in Germany.] At
last the spectre of materialism penetrated into the palaces of the
dynastic leaders of our people, and from that day began the preaching
of the blessings of everlasting peace. At the same time there began a
hateful campaign of slander against all true patriots, against all
ethical champions of war (_Ethiker des Krieges_.)--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W.,
p. 6.
315. The laurels of this bloodless victory [the victory of the war
spirit] belong to that part of the German teaching profession which
has remained true to its patriotic duties!--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 8.
316. Though clever writers sometimes speak of the Kaiser's romantic
proclivities, his earnest searching of the Scriptures has brought him
to such a sober way of thinking that he has steered clear of all
Utopias, and has not allowed himself to be led astray by the empty
dreams of pacifist enthusiasm.--PASTOR M. HENNIG, D.K.U.W., p. 16.
317. We have no knowledge of pacifist utterances of representative
Germans of any time. The wretched book of the aged Kant, on "Perpetual
Peace" ... is the only inglorious exception. Such utterances would
indeed amount to a sin against the holy spirit of Germanism, which,
from the depths of its heroism, cannot possibly arrive at any view
other than a high appreciation of war.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p.
93.
318. One or other of the English swashbucklers has recently said that
the Allies are not fighting against the Germany of Beethoven and
Goethe, but against the Germany of Bismarck, of which they have had
too much.... But Faust and the Ninth Symphony strongly resemble the
mighty works of the great artsmith, Bismarck.--K. ENGELBRECHT,
D.D.D.K., p. 61.
319. How far our classic age ... was removed from a depreciation and
rejection of war is shown by the attitude assumed by a spirit so
pathetically calm and aloof as Jean Paul, who nevertheless called war
the strengthening iron cure of humanity, and maintained, indeed, that
this held good more for the side which suffers than for that which
wins. The fever caused by the wounds of war was, in his opinion,
better than the jail fever of a loathsome peace.--PROF. W. SOMBART,
H.U.H., p. 94.
320. It is monstrous that even high spiritual dignitaries can be
found, in our days, to tell their adherents that war is a misfortune,
and that such utterances can actually be printed by the official
press.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 7.
321. Just imagine our humanity of to-day--I mean, of course, our
German humanity--without its military education. Non-German humanity
gives us some idea of what that would mean!--H. v. WOLZOGEN, G.Z.K.,
p. 60.
322. If we are to carry on the warlike education of our people--and we
are resolved to do so--then we by that very fact affirm our constant
readiness again to enter upon a war, as soon as our honour, our inward
or outward growth, or the expansive tendencies rooted in the inmost
nature of our people, demand it.--PASTOR D. BAUMGARTEN, D.R.S.Z., No.
24, p. 17.
323. The incomparably greater efficiency of army administration, even
in questions of civil life, has everywhere made a deep impression
during the present war, and has opened the eyes of many. One has
constantly heard people exclaim: "Oh, it could only continue after the
war!"--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, P.I., p. 116.
324. Oh, that Germany would learn from this war to send out soldiers
only--Generals and ex-officers of the General Staff--as German
diplomatists, ambassadors and consuls!--K.L.A. SCHMIDT, D.E.E., p. 17.
325. We must not look for permanent peace as a result of this war.
Heaven defend Germany from that.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 19.
_See also Nos. 91, 192a, 195, 217._
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Down to this point Burckhardt is condensing a paragraph from Ernst
v. Lasaulx, "Philosophie der Geschichte," 1856 p. 85.
[27] Quoted in original.
[28] Written in 1885.
[29] Klaus Wagner (_Krieg_, p. 223) has a long statistical argument to
the same effect. He says that 41,000 men lost their lives in 1870-71,
and estimates on this basis that, in a repetition of that war, the
Germany of his own time (1906) would lose only one man in every 1,600
of her population. The confident assumption that the next war could be
nothing but 1870 over again underlies all German speculation on the
subject.
[30] From Schiller's _Wallensteins Lager_.
IV
RUTHLESSNESS
IV
RUTHLESSNESS
(BEFORE THE WAR.)
326. War is an act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy,
to accomplish our will.... Insignificant limitations, hardly worthy of
mention, which it imposes on itself, under the name of the law of
nations, accompany this violence without notably enfeebling
it.--GENERAL C v. CLAUSEWITZ, V.K., Vol. i., p. 4.
327. I warn you against pity: from it will one day arise a heavy cloud
for men. Verily, I am weatherwise!--FR. NIETZSCHE, Z. _Of the
Pitiful._
328. The Germans let the primitive Prussian tribes decide whether they
should be put to the sword or thoroughly Germanized. Cruel as these
processes of transformation may be, they are a blessing for humanity.
It makes for health that the nobler race should absorb the inferior
stock.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i, p. 121.
329. Much that is dreadful and inhuman in history, much that one
hardly likes to believe, is mitigated by the reflection that the one
who commands and the one who carries out are different persons--the
former does not behold the sight, therefore does not experience the
strong impression on the imagination; the latter obeys a superior and
therefore feels no responsibility.--FR. NIETZSCHE, H.T.H., section
101.
330. The warrior has need of passion. It must not ... be regarded as a
necessary evil; nor condemned as a regrettable consequence of physical
contact; nor must we seek to restrain it and curb it as a savage and
brutal force.--GENERAL v. HARTMANN, D.R., Vol. XIII., p. 122.
331. One must ... resist all sentimental weakness: life is _in its
essence_ appropriation, injury, the overpowering of whatever is
foreign to us and weaker than ourselves, suppression, hardness, the
forcing upon others of our own forms, the incorporation of others,
or, at the very least and mildest, their exploitation.--FR. NIETZSCHE,
B.G.E., section 259.
332. We may depend upon the re-Germanizing of Alsace, but not of
Livonia and Kurland. There no other course is open to us but to keep
the subject race in as uncivilized a condition as possible, and thus
prevent them from becoming a danger to their handful of
conquerors.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i, p. 122.
333. A morality of the ruling class [has for] its principle that one
has duties only to one's equals; that one may act towards beings of a
lower rank, towards all that is foreign, just as seems good to one ...
and in any case "beyond good and evil."--FR. NIETZSCHE, B.G.E.,
section 260.
334. The "argument of war" permits every belligerent State to have
recourse to all means which enable it to attain the object of the war;
still, practice has taught the advisability of allowing in one's own
interest the introduction of a limitation in the use of certain
methods of war, and a total renunciation of the use of others.... If
in the following work the expression "the law of war" is used, it must
be understood that by it is meant only ... a limitation of arbitrary
behaviour which custom and conventionality, human friendliness and a
calculating egoism have erected, but for the observance of which there
exists no express sanction, but only "the fear of reprisals"
decides.--G.W.B., pp. 52, 53.
335. A new type of philosophers and commanders will some time or other
be needed, at the very idea of which everything that has existed in
the way of occult, terrible and benevolent [!] beings might look pale
and dwarfed. The image of such leaders hovers before our eyes.... The
conditions which one would have partly to create and partly to utilize
for their genesis [include] a transvaluation of values, under the new
pressure and hammer of which a conscience should be steeled and a
heart transformed to brass, so as to bear the weight of such
responsibility.--FR. NIETZSCHE, B.G.E., section 203.
336. Since the tendency of thought of the last century was dominated
essentially by humanitarian considerations which not infrequently
degenerated into sentimentality and weak emotionalism, there have not
been wanting attempts to influence the development of the usages of
war in a way which was in fundamental contradiction with the nature of
war and its object. Attempts of this kind will also not be wanting in
the future, the more so as these agitations have found a kind of moral
recognition in some provisions of the Geneva Convention and the
Brussels and Hague Conferences.... The danger can only be met by a
thorough study of war itself. By steeping himself in military history
an officer will be able to guard himself against excessive
humanitarian notions, it will teach him that certain severities are
indispensable to war, nay, more, that the only true humanity very
often lies in a ruthless application of them.--G.W.B., pp. 54, 55.
337. Those very men who are so strictly kept within bounds by good
manners ... who, in their behaviour to one another, show themselves so
inventive in consideration, self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride and
friendship--those very men are to the outside world, to things foreign
and to foreign countries, little better than so many uncaged beasts of
prey. Here they enjoy liberty from all social restraint ... and become
rejoicing monsters, who perhaps go on their way, after a hideous
sequence of murder, conflagration, violation, torture, with as much
gaiety and equanimity as if they had merely taken part in some student
gambols.... Deep in the nature of all these noble races there lurks
unmistakably the beast of prey, the _blond beast_, lustfully roving in
search of booty and victory.--FR. NIETZSCHE, G.M., i., II.
338. However much it may ruffle human feeling to compel a man to do
harm to his own Fatherland, and indirectly to fight his own troops,
none the less no army operating in an enemy's country will altogether
renounce this expedient.--G.W.B., p. 117.
339. A still more severe measure is the compulsion of the inhabitants
to furnish information about their own army, its strategy, its
resources, and its military secrets. The majority of writers of all
nations are unanimous in their condemnation of this measure.
Nevertheless it cannot be entirely dispensed with; doubtless it will
be applied with regret, but the argument of war will frequently make
it necessary.--G.W.B., p. 118.
340. That the lambs should bear a grudge against the great birds of
prey is in no way surprising; but that is no reason why we should
blame the great birds of prey for picking up the lambs.... To demand
of strength that it should _not_ manifest itself as strength, that it
should _not_ be a will for overcoming, for overthrowing, for mastery,
a thirst for enemies, for struggles and triumphs, is as absurd as to
demand of weakness that it should manifest itself as strength.--FR.
NIETZSCHE, G.M., i., 13.
341. It is a gratuitous illusion to suppose that modern war does not
demand far more brutality, far more violence, and an action far more
general than was formerly the case.--GENERAL v. HARTMANN, D.R., Vol.
xiv., p. 89.
342. The enemy State must not be spared the want and wretchedness of
war; these are particularly useful in shattering its energy and
subduing its will.--GENERAL v. HARTMANN, D.R., Vol. xiii., p. 459.
343. We ... believe that [man's] Will to Life had to be intensified
into unconditional Will to Power; we hold that hardness, violence,
slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism,
arts of temptation and devilry of all kinds; that everything evil,
terrible, tyrannical, wild-beast-like and serpent-like in man
contributes to the elevation of the species just as much as its
opposite--and in saying this we do not even say enough.--FR.
NIETZSCHE, B.G.E., section 44.
344. Even if there were no question of vengeance, even if we were not
demanding reparation for ancient wrongs ... the crime (_Frevel_) of
opposing the development of Germany is so great that the most
trenchant measures are scarcely a sufficient punishment for
it!--D.B.B., p. 214.
345. Whoever enters upon a war in future, will do well to look only to
his own interests, and pay no heed to any so-called international law.
He will do well to act without consideration and without scruple, and
this holds good in the case of a war with England.[31]--D.B.B., p.
214.
346. Hatred, delight in mischief, rapacity and ambition, and whatever
else is called evil, belong to the marvellous economy of the
conservation of the race.--FR. NIETZSCHE, J.W., section 1.
347. Individual persons may be harshly dealt with when an example
is made of them, intended to serve as a warning.... Whenever a
national war breaks out, terrorism becomes a necessary military
principle.--GENERAL v. HARTMANN, D.R., Vol. XIII, p. 462.
348. Terrorism is seen to be a relatively gentle procedure, useful to
keep in a state of obedience the masses of the people.--GENERAL V.
HARTMANN, D.R., Vol. XIII, p. 462.
349. To protect oneself against attack and injuries from the
inhabitants, and to employ ruthlessly the necessary means of defence
and intimidation is obviously not only a right but a duty of the staff
of the army.--G.W.B., p. 120.
350. The more pitiless is the _væ victis_, the greater is the security
of the ensuing peace. In the days of old, conquered peoples were
completely annihilated. To-day this is _physically_ impracticable, but
one can imagine conditions which should approach very closely to total
destruction.--D.B.B., p. 214.
_Compare Nos. 196, 197._
351. International law is in no way opposed to the exploitation of the
crimes of third parties (assassination, incendiarism, robbery and the
like) to the prejudice of the enemy.--G.W.B., p. 85.
352. In reality the evil impulses are just in as high a degree
expedient, indispensable, and conservative of the species as the
good--only, their function is different.--FR. NIETZSCHE, J.W., section
4.
353. If the [small] nations in question have nothing Germanic in them,
and are therefore foreign to our Kultur, the question at once arises:
Do they stand in the way of our expansion, or do they not? In the
latter case, let them develop as their nature prescribes; in the
former case, it would be folly to spare them, for they would be like a
wedge in our flesh, which we refrained from extracting only for their
own sake. If we found ourselves forced to break up the historical form
of the nation, in order to separate its racial elements, taking what
belongs to our race[32] and rejecting what is foreign to it, we ought
not therefore to have any moral scruples or to think ourselves
inhuman. (In this connection I refer the reader to my later chapter on
humanity[33]).--J.L. REIMER, E.P.D., p. 130.
354. Article 40 of the Declaration of Brussels requires that
requisitions ... shall bear a direct relation to the capacity and
resources of a country, and, indeed, the justification for this
condition would be willingly recognized by every one in theory, but it
will scarcely ever be observed in practice. In cases of necessity, the
needs of an army will alone decide.--G.W.B., p. 134.
355. In spite of his delight in mere success, in spite of his
recklessness in the choice of men and methods, in spite of all the
harshness and brutality which his nature must acquire, the true
statesman displays a disinterestedness which cannot fail to
impress.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p. 58.
356. Verily, ye good and just; much in you is laughable, and most of
all your fear of what hath hitherto been called "devil"! ... I guess
that you will call my Superman "devil"!--FR. NIETZSCHE, Z. _Of Manly
Prudence_.
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
357. Our troops are assured of their mission; and they recognize
clearly, too, that the truest compassion lies in taking the sternest
measures, in order to bring the war itself to an early close.--PASTOR
G. TRAUB, D.K.U.S., p. 6.
358. How much further would Germany have got in Alsace-Lorraine, if it
had modelled its policy on Cromwell's treatment of Ulster, and had not
been misled by weak humanitarianism!--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 93.
359. In the midst of this bewildering uproar, the soul again learns
the truth of the old doctrine: it is the whole man that matters, and
not his individual acts; it is the soul that gives value to the deeds,
not the deeds to the soul.--PASTOR G. TRAUB, D.K.U.S., p. 6.
_Compare Nietzsche, passim._
360. We are not only compelled to accept the war that is forced upon
us ... but are even compelled to carry on this war with a cruelty, a
ruthlessness, an employment of every imaginable device, unknown in any
previous war.--PASTOR D. BAUMGARTEN, D.R.S.Z., No. 24, p. 7.
361. Whoever cannot prevail upon himself to approve from the bottom of
his heart the sinking of the _Lusitania_--whoever cannot conquer his
sense of the gigantic cruelty (_ungeheure Grausamkeit_) to unnumbered
perfectly innocent victims ... and give himself up to honest delight
at this victorious exploit of German defensive power--him we judge to
be no true German.--PASTOR D. BAUMGARTEN, D.R.S.Z., No. 24, p. 7.[34]
_See also No. 423._
FOOTNOTES:
[31] Observe that these two utterances are not shrieks of the war
frenzy, but are the reflections of a German patriot in the year of
grace 1900.
[32] The author does not explain how Germanic elements are to be
discovered in peoples which he has assumed to have nothing Germanic in
them.
[33] This chapter is an ingenious disquisition to prove that humanity
may be all very well for inferior races, but that Germanism cannot be
hampered by its restraints.
[34] This and the previous extract are taken from an address on the
Sermon on the Mount!
V
MACHIAVELISM
V
MACHIAVELISM
=Mendacity and Faithlessness.=
(BEFORE THE WAR.)
362. A stock of inherited conceptions of integrity and morality is a
necessity for government.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p. 317.
363. When one really meditates a war, one must say no word about it;
one must envelop one's designs in a profound mystery; then, suddenly
and without warning, one leaps like a thief in the night--as the
Japanese destroyers leapt upon the unsuspecting Port Arthur, as
Frederick II. threw himself upon Silesia.[35]--A. WIRTH, U.A.P., p.
36.
364. The brilliant Florentine was the first to infuse into politics
the great idea that the State is Power. The consequences of this
thought are far-reaching. It is the truth, and those who dare not face
it had better leave politics alone.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p.
85.
365. As real might can alone guarantee the endurance of peace and
security, and as war is the best test of real might, war contains the
promise of future peace. But it must if possible [_womöglich_] be a
righteous and honourable war, something in the nature of a war of
defence.--J. BURCKHARDT, W.B., p. 164.
366. It was Machiavelli who first laid down the maxim that when the
State's salvation is at stake there must be no enquiry into the purity
of the means employed; only let the State be secured and no one will
condemn them.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p. 83.
367. The relations between two States must often be termed a latent
war, which is provisionally being waged in peaceful rivalry. Such a
position justifies the employment of hostile methods, cunning and
deception, just as war itself does.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p.
49.
368. The statesman has no right to warm his hands with smug
self-laudation at the smoking ruins of his Fatherland, and comfort
himself by saying, "I have never lied"; this is the monkish type of
virtue.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol i., p. 104.
369. Belligerent States are always and exclusively in a pure state of
nature, in which there cannot possibly be any question or right [or
law].--E. v. HARTMANN, quoted by EIN DEUTSCHER, W.K.B.M., p. 12.
370. How markedly Bismarck's grand frankness in large matters stands
out amidst all his craft in single instances.[36]--H. V. TREITSCHKE,
P., Vol. i., p. 90.
371. Let it be the task of our diplomacy so to shuffle the cards that
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.
431. Envy is utterly foreign to the German nature. But _one_ exception
we must now admit. We old fellows ... look with envy at the young, who
are risking their fresh life and strength for the Fatherland. Of this
envy, at any rate, we must acquit England: its best youth remains
quietly at home, and wins victories in the football field, leaving it
to salaried hirelings to shed their blood.--PROF. G. ROETHE, D.R.S.Z.,
No. 1, p. 11.
432. The doctrine of comfort, as a view of the world, certainly comes
of evil, and a people who are filled with it, like the English, are
little more than a heap of living corpses. The whole body of the
people begins to rot.... In England to-day every trade unionist is
stuck in the morass of comfort.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 102.
433. As soon as it comes to the sanguinary reality, the English
hireling's heart drops into his breeches. And the English Scotchmen
have not even breeches for it to drop into.--O. SIEMENS, W.L.K.D.,
p. 19.
434. Whence should courage come?... In our German soldiers it springs
from honest German wrath. But the Englishman must shout himself into
courage. When the first English troops landed in France, they sang
gaily and interrupted their songs by shouts of "Are we down-hearted?"
Whereupon the English hireling sought to keep up his spirits by an
answering shout of "No!" ... Only their own timidity suggests to the
English such questions as to their courage. One need not be any great
psychologist to realize this.--O. SIEMENS, W.L.K.D., p. 19.
435. The cunning and unscrupulousness of the pirate does, indeed,
survive in the English sailor; he lies in ambush for neutral
merchant-ships[!], lays mines in the fairway of neutral neighbour
States, and commits deeds of violence of the most manifold kinds; but
the resolution of the pirate, the daring intrepidity in attack, he no
longer possesses.--"GERMANUS," B.U.D.K., p. 43.
436. The great majority of the English Army are to this day Keltic
Irishmen and Keltic Scotchmen; the real Englishmen do not enlist. In
the English battles of the past, Englishmen of the nobility no doubt
were in command, but the armies consisted of foreign mercenaries, for
the most part Germans.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 51.
437. England might, in league with Germany, have _dictated Kultur to
the whole world_ ... if she had not been _untrue to the Gospel of
Work_!--PROF. A. SCHRÖER, Z.C.E., p. 61.
438. The English race ... must always be stimulated by the infusion of
new blood, otherwise it would perish of its own indolence.--PROF. A.
SCHRÖER, Z.C.E., p. 21.
=Treachery to Germanism.=
439. England is now showing on what feeble feet its Germanism rests,
how unsound, how profoundly unworthy of the German Thought it is. It
cannot shake off its bitter accusers--its Shakespeare and Carlyle,
its Dickens and Kingsley. It has committed treason against the spirit
of its greatest men, who were filled with the certainty that the
German Thought must conquer, and that this victory must be _the_
victory ... of Kultur, civilization and spiritual progress.--K.
ENGELBRECHT, D.D.D.K., p. 57.
440. Would to God Professor Engel were right in maintaining that the
English are Kelts. Then we should not have to be ashamed of our
brothers!--PASTOR B. LÖSCHE, D.S.E.S.D., p. 4.
441. It is useless for publicists to encourage the popular belief that
the English prove by their behaviour that they are no longer Teutons;
for Teutons they are, and purer Teutons than many Germans.[42]--H.S.
CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 45.
442. Does one German cousin fight against another? We good-natured
idealists have always dwelt upon this German cousinship. The
three-quarters-Keltic England has no feeling of common
Germanism.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 15.
443. What about ... our dear cousins the English, those hucksters
whose Germanism we have at last begun openly to question.... Though
the English language is doubtless Germanic, that is by no means a
proof that the Keltic bastards have acquired the German nature
(_Wesen_). We do not count the English-speaking American negroes as
belonging to the white race.--O. SIEMENS, W.L.K.D., p. 18.
444. Against us stands the world's greatest sham of a people ... the
Judas among nations, who this time, for a change, betrays Germanism
for thirty pieces of silver. Against us stands sensual France, the
harlot (_Dirne_) among the peoples, to be bought for any prurient
excitement, shameless, unblushing, impudent and cowardly [!] with her
worthless myrmidons.--"War Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in
H.A.H., p. 117.
=Sir Edward Grey and his Colleagues.=
445. Abysmal hypocrisy ... the national vice has been incarnated for
us in Sir Edward Grey.--PROF. G. ROETHE, D.R.S.Z., No. i, p. 14.
446. When that English gentleman, Minister Grey, who has a cancerous
tumour in place of a heart, in the end has to reap the infamy he
deserves, he will promptly cast it from him as dirt with his
horse-hoof.--PASTOR TOLZIEN, in "Patriotic-Evangelical War Lectures,"
quoted in H.A.H., p. 141.
447. The Englishman treats the foreigner, when he does not need him,
as thin air, when he does need him, as a piece of goods; consequently,
when he sits in the Cabinet, he considers that, towards a foreign
State, a lie is not a lie, deceit is not deceit, and a surprise attack
in time of peace is a perfectly legitimate measure, so long as it
serves England's interests.--PROF. W. WUNDT, D.N.I.P., p. 131.
448. Sir Edward Grey possesses in a singular degree the gift of
carrying on business with complete control of all emotion and
elimination of all deep thought. Every third word of such person is
the untranslatable, elusive, "I dare say."--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D.,
p. 14.
449. The untruthfulness and unscrupulous brutality with which the
English Cabinet carries on the war place it far below the level of
Muscovite morality.--"GERMANUS."--B.U.D.K., p. 35.
450. The English diplomatist of the type of Sir Edward Grey holds
honesty in political matters to be a blunder and a sin. Therefore he
usually expresses himself in a form which is capable of several
interpretations.--"GERMANUS," B.U.D.K., p. 18.
451. Sir Edward Grey has for years presided over all the peace
conferences--only to ensure the coming of the projected war; he has
for years sought a "better understanding" with Germany--only to
prevent the honest German statesmen and diplomats from suspecting that
a war of annihilation had been irrevocably decreed; the German
Emperor, at the last moment, had almost averted the danger of
war--Grey, the unctuous apostle of peace, contrived so to shuffle the
cards as to render it inevitable.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 66.
_For "shuffling the cards" compare No. 371._
452. The President of the United States, Professor Wilson ... allows
American munition works to supply our enemies with unlimited
quantities of war material, favours the infamous design of England to
starve out Germany, and rises in his "peace" speeches to a height of
political and religious hypocrisy in no way inferior to that attained
by the English "million-murderer" Grey.--PROF. E. HAECKEL, E.W., p. 61.
=Britain's Great Illusion.=[43]
453. The English regard themselves as the Chosen People, towards which
all others are predestined to stand in a relation of more or less
complete dependence.--PROF. U. v. WILAMOWITZ-MÖLLENDORF, R. pt. iv.,
p. 19.
454. Strange as it may appear to us, it is nevertheless unquestionable
that all England has from of old been penetrated with the idea that
her attainment of uncontested colonial and maritime power was not only
to her interest but to that of the whole world, _the dominion over
which God had Himself assigned to her_, and that therefore all means
to this beneficent end were permissible and well-pleasing to God.--J.
RIESSER, E.U.W., p. 10.
455. Just because the English found their national feeling on the
consciousness of their kultural successes, and the belief that they
alone are _God's chosen people on earth_, every desire of other
peoples to assert equality of rights appears to their self-conceit an
offence against the will of God.--PROF. A. SCHRÖER, Z.C.E., p. 31.
456. The belief in the Kultur-mission entrusted to it by God, in
preference to all other peoples, has grown into the very flesh and
blood of the English people.--PROF. F. KEUTGEN, B.R.K., p. 7.
457. The English hold that they are literally descended from the ten
tribes [!]. But we Germans do not base our relation to Israel on any
such fleshly foundation. The German people are the spiritual, the
religious parallel of the people of Israel, they are "the true Israel
begotten of the Spirit."--DR. PREUSS, quoted in H.A.H., p. 213.
458. Many of the best, most unselfish and most modest Englishmen pray
to God in all good faith that He would at last open the eyes of the
German people, and especially of the German Emperor, that they may see
how wrong and even sinful it is to place any further hindrances in the
way of the expansion of the Kingdom of God on earth by "His chosen
people," that is to say, the English themselves.--PROF. A. SCHRÖER,
Z.C.E., p. 12.
459. The Briton regards himself as chosen by Providence, the elect of
the Lord, entrusted with a special _mission on this earth_, and placed
under the immediate protection of Heaven, with a first claim upon all
the good things of the earth.--"GERMANUS," B.U.D.K., p. 11.
460. Our duty to ourselves, and to our English fellow-creatures--since
we would fain be, not an imaginary "chosen people" but true children
of God--is to give them such a thorough thrashing that they may once
for all be cured of the fatal illusion that they have established a
monopoly in the dear Lord God, and that the rest of humanity is
destined only to serve as a stool for their clumsy feet!--PROF. A.
SCHRÖER, Z.C.E., p. 70.
461. Perhaps the reason that England's power now stands in so great
peril is that, in her self-deceiving vanity, she thought that God had
guaranteed her the dominion of the world.--PASTOR M. HENNIG, D.K.U.W.,
P. 86.
462. It is a matter of fact that the greater part of the English
people cherish the pathological imagination that they alone are the
true pioneers of Kultur and culture.--PROF. E. HAECKEL, E.W., p. 115.
463. The English now assert the claim of _their_ Kultur to be the only
existing, and, indeed, the _God-appointed_ summit of human
development, which to attain would mean salvation for all humanity.
This is a positively grotesque mixture of national pride and
religiosity.--PROF. A. SCHRÖER, Z.C.E., p. 12.
464. "England über alles" has in England a very solid meaning, as
compared with our quite ideally conceived "Deutschland über alles." An
immense self-assurance, partly reposing on the notion of being in a
special sense God's chosen people, gives to these claims a certain
inward foundation. In the consciousness of an alleged superiority of
moral Kultur, the English aspire to rule the world.--PROF. R. SEEBERG,
D.R.S.Z., No. 15, p. 28.
465. Alone among Kultur-peoples, the English know only themselves, and
regard all others, without exception, as foreign, inferior creatures,
towards whom Nature decrees that the laws of morality, as between man
and man, should not hold good, any more than they hold good towards
animals and plants.[44]--PROF. A. SCHRÖER, Z.C.E., p. 49.
466. There are, of course, many sincerely pious Christians in England.
But either they are impotent as against the prevailing passion, or
they are blinded by the illusion of the "chosen people," and have
therefore lost all power of sober self-criticism.--OBERLEHRER HERMANN
SCHUSTER, D.K.K.
=Comic Relief.=
467. England understands by freedom only club-law, with the club
always in her own hand.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 22.
468. Since the Cromwellian rule of the sword, the army is so hated in
England that an officer, going on duty from his home to the barracks,
has to drive in a closed carriage.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 41.
469. I found everywhere in England, during my last visits in 1907 and
1908, a positively terrifying blind hatred for Germany, and impatient
longing for a war of annihilation.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 12.
470. England's army of postal officials amounts to 213,000,
distributed through 24,245 post offices; the German Empire has 50,500
post offices and 305,000 officials. Now we can understand--can we
not?--why England envies us.--PASTOR M. HENNIG, D.K.U.W., p. 39.
471. One finds in England no geniality, no broad, kindly humour, no
gaiety. Everything--so far as the outward life is concerned--is hurry,
money, noise, ostentation, snobbery, vulgarity, arrogance, discontent,
envy.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 60.
472. King Edward VII., while he was Prince of Wales, was often a guest
of the London Savage Club, which is so "exclusive" that the Prince
could not become a member.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 131.
473. Discipline within the parties is maintained with Draconian
severity by the so-called "Whips" (i.e., _Peitschenschwingern_,
lash-wielders); and woe to the member who should dare to express his
own opinion!--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 17.
474. The English admit that, owing to the demoralizing influence of
Edward VII., they are in a state of religious, social and economic
decadence, but their illusion as to the incomparable superiority of
England prevents them from tracing the evil to its true source, and as
some one must be to blame for it, the fault must of course lie with
the rapidly climbing Germany.--PROF. A. SCHRÖER, Z.C.E., p. 34.
475. Every man wears the same trousers, every woman the same hat. I
remember once being unable to find in all London a single blue
necktie--blue was not the fashion. This would have been unthinkable in
Berlin, Paris or Vienna.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 18.
476. Thus science, which to us is a very serious matter, is to the
Englishman, _like everything else_--except money-making!--like, for
instance, politics, administration, the care of the poor, &c.,--_a
private hobby, a sort of sport_.--PROF. A. SCHRÖER, Z.C.E., p. 43.
477. On the day of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, one walks, in
the giant city of London, through literally empty (_buchstäblich
leere_) streets. From the oldest duchess to the youngest chimney
sweep, all are seized with the same mad enthusiasm for this
event.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 18.
478. [Puritanism leads to] that shrinking from the frank expression of
emotions which (for example) explains the fact that cultivated England
reads its great poet Shakespeare for the most part in editions in
which everything is deleted that could give offence to a sensitive old
maid.--PROF. W. WUNDT, D.N.I.P., p. 32.
479. At the parliamentary elections [before the war] nothing is spoken
of but the hatred for Germany, which animates the speaker and his
audience.--K.L.A. SCHMIDT, D.E.E., p. 10.
480. [British ignorance is] so horrific that a German can scarcely
conceive it. Five years ago, in a town of 40,000 inhabitants, it was
impossible to find a single man, who, for payment, could read English
correctly to an invalid.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 18.
481. Attention has recently been drawn, by an authoritative writer, to
the fact that English biology and the theory of evolution, which have
achieved so much celebrity, are in essence nothing but the
transference of liberal middle-class views to the processes of life
seen in nature.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 17.
482. Is the noble land of Shakespeare fighting against us? Not at all;
for Shakespeare we have long conquered. He has long been more a German
than an English poet.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 15.
483. About the middle of the last century, England was in a fair way
to save herself from decadence through the revivifying virtue of the
philosophico-ethical influence of Germany.--PROF. A. SCHRÖER, Z.C.E.,
p. 69.
484. England is incapable of producing a people's army
(_Volksarmee_).[45]--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 50.
_See also Nos. 3, 146, 147, 174, 176, 178, 179._
=France.=
485. The English pirate-soul and French Chauvinism were bound to seek
and find each other.--P. ROHRBACH, W.D.K., p. 14.
486. Beasts who spring upon us we can only treat as beasts, but the
bestial hatred which impels them we must not allow to arise in
us.--PROF. F. MEINECKE, D.D.E., p. 51.
487. At no former time could the French soldier be reproached with
cowardice.... If his present conduct is so far beneath his reputation
... it is because he lacks the stimulus of enthusiasm, because he
knows that it is not his country that is sending him forth to battle,
but only an ambitious and short-sighted Government, because he is
conscious that he is not fighting for a great and noble cause, but for
a mean and dirty one.--W. HELM, W.W.S.M., p. 11.
488. For honour's sake another hundred thousand men may be sacrificed,
but there must be an end to that. Then it is all over with France as a
great Power.... These men [the French Ministry] or others like them
must make peace! Some one must make it, for the bloodshed cannot go on
forever. But what sort of a peace will it be? _Væ victis! Not till now
has Bismarck's victory been complete._--F. NAUMANN, Member of the
Reichstag, D.U.F., p. 8.
489. We will do well to leave to France the outward boundaries of a
great Power, if only that we may not figure as the tyrants of
Europe.--P. ROHRBACH, W.D.K., p. 28.
490. The defeat which France is now suffering is only the expiation of
guilt which is already a century old.... The twenty years of the
Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars had left the French a mere set of
individuals who care nothing for the maintenance of their race:
æsthetes and dandies, money-grubbers and Bohemians.--K. ENGELBRECHT,
D.D.D.K., p. 51.
491. [As to the origin of the war] the French, as England's trusty
henchmen, obediently repeat what England tells them. If Don Quixote
rides at the windmills, Sancho Panza must keep pace with him.--PROF.
W.V. BLUME, D.D.M., p. 11.
_See also No. 3._
=Belgium.=
492. Belgium, the granary and armoury, is predestined to be the
battlefield in the struggle for the Meuse and the Rhine. I ask any
general or statesman who has seriously considered the problems of war
and politics, whether Belgium can remain neutral in a European
war--that is to say, can be respected as neutral any longer than may
appear expedient to the Power which feels itself possessed of the best
advantage for attack.--ERNST MORITZ ARNDT (1834), quoted in H.A.H.,
p. 22.
493. If Sir Edward Grey had urged neutrality [!] upon Belgium, he would
have done that country the greatest possible service.--"GERMANUS,"
B.U.D.K., p. 36.
494. Where the people of Israel had to demand a passage through foreign
territory, they were expressly enjoined first to offer the inhabitants
peace (Deuteronomy, xx., 10). Only when the right of transit was
denied them, was the sword to be drawn and the passage forced. In such
a case ... Israel calls the wars in which it has to engage, wars of
Jehovah. Its God is indeed a man of war, the Lord of the hosts of
Israel. The Scripture even goes so far as to ascribe the subsequent
corruption of the people to the fact that it did not completely
annihilate the inhabitants of the conquered country.[46]--PASTOR M.
HENNIG, D.K.U.W., p. 6.
495. If Belgium takes part in the war, it must be wiped off the map of
Europe.[47]--R. THEUDEN, W.M.K.B., v., p. 10.
496. How our adversaries understood neutrality is most strikingly
summed up in the following passage from the Paris paper _Le National_,
which appeared as early as November 16, 1834 [!] "Le jour viendra ou
... la neutralité de la Belgique, en cas de guerre européenne,
disparaitra devant le voeu du peuple beige.... La Belgique se rangera
naturellement du côté de la France!"--PROF. C. BORCHLING, D.B.P., p. 5.
497. A Belgian journalist who had ventured into Liège writes:--"The
Germans behave quietly. What they require they pay for in ready money.
The pigeons which nest in the Place St. Lambert have a corner of the
place where they are fed. The Germans have respected this corner,
though they have occupied the rest of the place."--PASTOR D.M. HENNIG,
D.K.U.W., p. 91.
498. See what the war has laid bare in others! What have we learnt of
the soul of Belgium? Has it not revealed itself as the soul of
cowardice and assassination? They have no moral forces within them;
therefore they resort to the torch and the dagger.--PROF. U.V.
WILAMOWITZ-MÖLLENDORF, R., i., p. 6.
499. The fate that Belgium has called down upon herself is hard for
the individual, but not too hard for this political structure
(_Staatsgebilde_), for the destinies of the immortal great nations
stand so high that they cannot but have the right, in case of need, to
stride over existences that cannot defend themselves, but live, as
parasites, upon the rivalries of the great.--PROF. H. ONCKEN, S.M.,
September, 1914, p. 819.
500. Our Chancellor has, with the scrupulous conscientiousness
peculiar to him, admitted that we were guilty of a certain wrong
[towards Belgium]. Here I cannot follow him.... When David, in the
pinch of necessity, took the shew-bread from the table of the Lord, he
was absolutely in the right; for at that moment the letter of the law
no longer existed.--PROF. A.V. HARNACK, I.M., 1st October, 1914, p. 23.
501. We were in the position of a man who, being attacked from two
sides, has to carry on a furious fight for life, and cannot concern
himself overmuch as to whether one or two flowers are trodden down in
his neighbour's garden.--PROF. DR. W. DIBELIUS, W.W.E., p. 5.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] If this does not mean that England was an accessory before the
fact to the murder of the Archduke, what _does_ it mean? The passage is
quoted with approval by Dr. Prockosch. _Englische Politik und
englischer Volksgeist_, p. 34.
[39] This clergyman's pamphlet, of 24 pp., is one uninterrupted torrent
of abuse.
[40] Doubtless a punning perversion of _Flugschrift_, pamphlet.
[41] It would be easy to cite 501 repetitions of this dogma in almost
the same words.
[42] Otherwise--horror of horrors!--Herr Chamberlain himself might not
be quite assured of his Germanism.
[43] As to the prevalence of this illusion in Germany, see section "The
Chosen People and its Mission," p. 28; also Introduction, p. xxi.
[44] Repeated, in other words, again and again by this author.
[45] Written 9th October, 1914.
[46] It is only fair to state that the writer does not apply this
doctrine directly to the case of Belgium; but he cannot but have had it
in mind. Here is the passage from Deuteronomy: "When thou drawest nigh
unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it
shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it
shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall become
tributary unto thee, and shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace
with thee, but will make war against thee, then shalt thou besiege it.
And when the Lord thy God delivereth it into thine hand, thou shalt
smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword. But the women, and
the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all
the spoil thereof, shalt thou take for a prey unto thyself; and thou
shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given
thee."
[47] As to the date of this utterance, see Index of Books.
INDEX OF BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS FROM WHICH QUOTATIONS ARE MADE
INDEX OF BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS FROM WHICH QUOTATIONS ARE MADE
_Where titles are given in English only, references are to the English
editions of the works in question_
A.U.K. "Amicus Patriæ": Armenien und Kreta. Eine Lebensfrage
für Deutschland. 1896. (Armenia and Crete. A Vital
Question for Germany.)
B.D.V. Ernst Hasse: Die Besiedelung des deutschen Volksbodens.
1905. (The Colonization of the German Folk-Territory.)
B.G.E. Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil.
B.I. Gerhart v. Schulze-Gaevernitz: Der britische
Imperialismus im 19 Jahrhundert. (British Imperialism
in the 19th Century.)
B.R.K. Friedrich Keutgen: Britische Reichsprobleme und der
Krieg. 1914. (British Imperial Problems and the War.)
B.U.D.K. "Germanus": Britannien und der Krieg. 1914. (Britain
and the War.)
D.A.P. Graf Ernst v. Reventlow: Deutschlands auswärtige
Politik. 1914. (Germany's Foreign Policy.)
D.B.B. Deutschland bei Beginn des 20sten Jahrhunderts, von
einem Deutschen. 1900. (Germany at the Beginning of the
20th Century, by a German.)
D.B.P. Conrad Borchling: Das belgische Problem. 1914. (The
Belgian Problem.)
D.C. Otfried Nippold: Der deutsche Chauvinismus. 1913.
(German Chauvinism.)
D.D.D.K. Karl Engelbrecht: Der Deutsche und dieser Krieg.
1914-15. (The German and this War.)
D.D.E. Friedrich Meinecke: Die deutsche Erhebung von 1914.
1914. (The German Uprising of 1914.)
D.D.M. Wilhelm v. Blume: Der deutsche Militarismus. 1915.
(German Militarism.)
D.E.E. Karl L.A. Schmidt: Das Ende Englands. n.d. [1914].
(The End of England.)
D.E.S.E. Max Stirner: Der Einzige und sein Eigentum. (The
Individual and his Property.)
D.G. Ernst Hasse: Deutsche Grenzpolitik. 1906. (German
Frontier Policy.)
D.I.W. Deutschland in Waffen.... (Germany under Arms.) [With a
preface and article by the Crown Prince.]
D.K.K. Der Krieg und die christlich-deutsche Kultur. 1915.
(The War and Christian-German Kultur.)
D.K.U.S. Gottfried Traube: Der Krieg und die Seele. 1914. (The
War and the Soul.)
D.K.U.W. Martin Hennig: Der Krieg und Wir. 1914. (The War and
We.)
D.N.I.P. Wilhelm Wundt: Die Nationen und ihre Philosophie. 1915.
(The Nations and their Philosophy.)
D.R. Julius v. Hartmann: Militärische Notwendigkeit und
Humanität, in "Deutsche Rundschau," Vols. XIII. and
XIV. 1877-78. (Military Necessity and Humanity.)
D.R.S.Z. Deutsche Reden in schwerer Zeit. (German Speeches in
Difficult Days.) [A series of pamphlets by the
Professors of Berlin University and a few others.]
1914-15.
D.S. Paul de Lagarde: Deutsche Schriften. 4th ed. 1903.
(German Writings.)
D.S.E.S.D. Bernhard Lösche: Du stolzes England, schäme dich! 1914.
(Thou proud England, shame on thee!)
D.U.F. Friedrich Naumann: Deutschland und Frankreich. 1914.
(Germany and France.)
D.W.D. Oskar A.H. Schmitz: Das wirkliche Deutschland: die
Wiedergeburt durch den Krieg. 1915. (The real Germany:
the Regeneration through the War.)
D.W.E. Edmund v. Heyking: Das wirkliche England. 1914. (The
real England.)
D.Z. Houston Stewart Chamberlain: Die Zuversicht. 1915.
Dated 25th May. (Confidence.)
E.B. Das Englandbuch der Täglichen Rundschau. 1915. (The
England-book of the Tägliche Rundschau newspaper.)
E.M.S. Franz v. Liszt: Ein mitteleuropäischer Staatenverband.
1914. (A Middle-European League of States.)
E.P.D. Joseph Ludwig Reimer: Ein Pangermanisches Deutschland.
1905. (A Pan-German Germany.)
E.S.S.H. Ein Hamburger Kaufmann: Die englische Seeräuber und
sein Handelskrieg. 1914. (A Hamburg Merchant: The
English Pirates and their Trade-War.)
E.S.V. Kurd v. Strantz: Ein starkes Volk--Ein starkes Heer.
1914. (A Strong People--A Strong Army.) [Published
shortly before the war.]
E.U.W. Jakob Reisser: England und Wir, 1914. (England and We.)
E.W. Ernst Haeckel: Ewigkeit: Weltkriegsgedanken. 1915.
(Eternity: Thoughts on the World-War.)
G.D. Otto Richard Tannenberg; Gross-Deutschland. 1911.
(Great Germany.)
G.D.W. Chr. Ludw. Poehlmann: Das Gute des Weltkrieges. 1914.
(The Good of the World-War.)
G.M. Friedrich Nietzsche: A Genealogy of Morals.
G.N.W. Friedrich v. Bernhardi: Germany and the Next War. Ed.
1914. [First published, 1912.]
G.U.M. Grossdeutschland und Mitteleuropa um das Jahr 1950, von
einem Alldeutschen. 1895. (Great-Germany and
Middle-Europe in 1950. By a Pan-German.)
G.W.B. The German War-Book. Translation by J.M. Morgan, M.A.
1915.
G.Z.K. Hans v. Wolzogen: Gedanken zur Kriegszeit. 1915.
(Thoughts in War-Time.)
H.A.H. J.P. Bang: Hurrah and Halleluiah. 1916.
H.D.F. Alfred H. Fried: Handbuch der Friedensbewegung. 1911.
(Handbook of the Peace Movement.)
H.T.H. Friedrich Nietzsche: Human, All-Too Human.
H.U.H. Werner Sombart: Händler und Helden. 1915. (Hucksters
and Heroes.)
I.M. Internationale Monatschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst und
Technik. (International Monthly for Science, Art and
Technology.)
J.W. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Joyous Wisdom.
K. Klaus Wagner: Krieg. 1906. (War.)
K.A. Houston Stewart Chamberlain: Kriegsaufsätze. 1914. (War
Essays.)
O.U.W. Albrecht Wirth: Orient und Weltpolitik. 1913. (The East
and World-Politics.)
P. Heinrich v. Treitschke: Politics. Ed. 1916. [First
published, 1899.]
P.G. Ernst v. Lasaulx: Philosophic der Geschichte. 1856.
(Philosophy of History.)
P.I. Houston Stewart Chamberlain: Politische Ideale. 1916.
(Political Ideals.)
P.K.U.K. Gustav E. Pazaurek: Patriotismus, Kunst und
Kunsthandwerk. 1914. (Patriotism, Art, and
Art-Handicraft.)
R. Ulrich v. Wilamowitz-Möllendorf: Reden. Four parts: Pt.
i., Zwei Reden. 1914. Pts. ii., iii., and iv., Reden
aus der Kriegszeit. 1915. (Two Speeches, and Speeches
in War-Time.)
R.D. Friedrich Lange: Reines Deutschtum, 5th Ed. 1904. (Pure
Germanism.)
S.I.U. Ludwik Gumplowicz: Socialphilosophie im Umriss. 1910.
(Social Philosophy in Outline.)
S.M. Süddeutsche Monatsheft. (South German Monthly.)
T.O.D. Albrecht Wirth: Türkei, Oesterreich, Deutschland. 1912.
(Turkey, Austria, Germany.)
U.A.P. Albrecht Wirth: Unsere äussere Politik. 1912. (Our
External Policy.)
V.G.D.K. Georg Misch: Vom Geist des Krieges und des deutschen
Volkes Barbarei. 1914. (Of the Spirit of the War, and
the Barbarism of the German People.)
V.K. K. v. Clausewitz: Vom Kriege. Ed. 1867. (On War.)
[First Published, 1832.]
V.U.W. Albrecht Wirth: Volkstum und Weltmacht in der
Geschichte. 2nd Ed. 1904. (National Spirit and
World-Power in History.)
W.B. Jakob Burckhardt: Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen.
1905. (World-Historic Reflections.)
W.B.D.G. Rudolf Eucken: Die weltgeschichtliche Bedeutung des
deutschen Geistes. 1914. (The World-Historic
Significance of the German Spirit.)
W.D. Fritz Bley: Die Weltstellung des Deutschtums. 1897.
(The World-Position of Germanism.)
W.D.K. Paul Rohrbach: Warum es der deutsche Krieg ist! 1914.
(Why it is the German War!)
W.D.U.S. R. Jannasch: Weshalb die Deutschen im Auslande
unbeliebt sind. 1915. (Why the Germans are unloved in
Foreign Parts.)
W.I.K. Ernst Hasse: Weltpolitik, Imperialismus und
Kolonialpolitik. 1906. (World-Politics, Imperialism,
and Colonial Politics.)
W.I.K.W. Daniel Frymann: Wenn ich der Kaiser wäre. 5th Ed. 1914.
(If I were the Kaiser.)
W.K.B.M. Ein Deutscher: Was uns der Krieg bringen muss. n.d.
[?1914] (What the War must bring us.)
W.L.K.D. Otto Siemens: Wie lange kann der Krieg dauern? n.d.
[?1914] (How long can the War last?)
W.M.K.B. Rudolf Theuden: Was muss uns der Krieg bringen? 1914.
Dated August, 1914, but written before it was known
that either Belgium or England would be involved in the
War. (What must the War bring us?)
W.U.G. P. Heinsick: Der Weltkrieg, seine Ursachen und Gründe.
n.d. (The World-War, its Causes and Reasons.)
W.U.W. Karl A. Kuhn: Die wahren Ursachen des Weltkrieges.
1914. (The True Causes of the World-War.)
W.W.E. W. Dibelius: Was will England? 1914. (What does England
want?)
W.W.R. Paul Rohrbach: Was will Russland? 1914. (What does
Russia want?)
W.W.S.G. Adolf v. Harnack: Was wir schon gewonnen haben und was
wir noch gewinnen müssen. 1914. (What we have already
won, and what we have yet to win.)
W.W.S.M. Willy Helm: Warum wir siegen müssen. 1915. (Why we
must win.)
Z. Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus spake Zarathustra.
Z.C.E.E. Arnold Schröer: Zur Characterisierung der Engländer.
n.d. (English Characteristics.)
Z.D.V. Ernst Hasse: Die Zukunft des deutschen Volkstums.
1908. (The Future of the German National Spirit.)
INDEX OF AUTHORS
INDEX OF AUTHORS
"Alldeutscher, Ein", 2, 202.
"Amicus Patriæ", 220, 278.
Arndt, Ernst Moritz (1769-1860). Poet and patriot, 492.
Baumgarten, D., Pastor, 322, 360, 361.
Bernhardi, Friedrich A.J. v. (b. 1849). General of Cavalry, late Chief
of Department in Great General Staff--5, 10, 13, 174, 246, 251, 259,
261, 265, 267, 276, 279, 281-287, 289-291, 297, 300, 367, 371, 376,
377, 384, 386, 388.
Bley, Fritz (b. 1853). Journalist and author, 9, 12, 198.
Blume, Wilhelm v. (b. 1867). Dr. Jur. Professor of Roman Law,
Tübingen, 225, 235a, 401a, 491.
Borchling, Conrad A.J. Carl (b. 1872). Dr. Phil. Professor, Hamburg
Colonial Institute, 496.
Brandl, Alois (b. 1855). Dr. Phil, LL.D., Geh. Regierungsrat.
Professor of English Philology, Berlin, 183.
Burckhardt, Jakob (1818-1897). Professor in Basel. Authority on
Renaissance Art, 241, 249, 295, 365.
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart (b. 1855). Son of Admiral Chamberlain.
"Left England, 1870." "Attacked by severe nervous trouble, 1884."
Married Richard Wagner's daughter, 21a, 50, 52c, 57, 60, 102, 108,
117, 120, 126, 145, 165, 172, 180, 180a, 184, 185, 187, 188-191,
229, 232, 235, 305, 323, 358, 408, 422, 436, 441, 451, 467, 469,
471, 473, 475, 477, 480, 484.
Clausewitz, Carl v. (1780-1831). Prussian General, and author of "Vom
Kriege," "an exposition of the philosophy of war which is absolutely
unrivalled", 326.
Deissmann, Gustav Adolf (b. 1866). Dr. Theol. Professor of New
Testament Exegesis, Berlin. Hon. degrees, Aberdeen, St. Andrews,
Manchester, 107, 121, 159, 391.
Delitzsch, Friedrich (b. 1850). Dr. Phil. Professor, Berlin.
Assyriologist, 26, 422a.
"Deutscher, Ein" (Was uns der Krieg bringen muss), 77, 378, 380, 381,
383.
"Deutscher, Ein" (Deutschland bei Beginn des 20sten Jahrhunderts),
193, 201, 223, 280, 303, 344, 345, 350.
Dibelius, Wilhelm (b. 1876). Dr. Phil. Professor of English Language
and Kultur, Hamburg, 501.
Engelbrecht, Kurt, 23, 36, 51, 94, 94a, 116, 141, 318, 439, 490.
Erdmann, Pastor, 155, 426.
Eucken, Rudolf (b. 1846). Dr. Phil., Litt., LLD., Geheimrat.
Professor, Jena. An eminent philosopher, 81, 83, 83, 138, 140.
Falck, G., 414.
Flamm, Oswald A.H. (b. 1861). Geh. Regierungsrat. Professor, Royal
Technical High School, Berlin, 404.
Fontane, Theodor (1819-1898). Highly esteemed poet and novelist, 394.
Francke, H., Pastor, 29, 99, 115, 148, 153.
Fried, Alfred H., 293.
Frymann, Daniel, 278a.
Fuchs, W., Dr., 274.
"Germanus", 168, 398, 410, 416, 435, 449, 450, 459, 493.
"German War Book", 334, 336, 338, 339, 349, 351, 354.
Gierke, Otto v. (b. 1841). Dr. Jur., Phil., Geh. Justizrat. Professor,
Berlin. Jurist. Hon. degree, Harvard, 76, 79, 80, 89, 92, 403.
Gottberg, Otto v. Editor of _Weekly Paper for the Youth of Germany_,
247, 252, 296.
Gruber, Max v. (b. 1853). Dr. Med., Obermedizinalrat, Hofrat.
Professor of Hygiene and Bacteriology, Munich, 65, 227a, 231.
Gumplowicz, Ludwik (b. 1838). Austrian professor, jurist and
economist, 264.
Haeckel, Ernst (b. 1843). Dr. Phil., Med., Jur. Professor of Zoology,
Jena. The German apostle of Darwinism and champion of "monism", 54a,
237, 407, 409, 412, 422b, 423a, 429, 452, 462.
Harden, Maximilian (b. 1861). Jewish journalist. Editor of _Zukunft_.
Real name, Witkowski, 209, 221, 242.
"Hamburger Kaufmann, Ein", 400.
Harnack, Adolf (b. 1851). Dr. Theol, Phil., Med. Jur. Professor,
Berlin. The great ecclesiastical historian, 31, 75, 163, 415, 500.
Hartmann, Eduard v. (1842-1906). "The Philosopher of the Unconscious",
369.
Hartmann, Julius v. (1817-1878). Prussian General of Cavalry, 254,
330, 341, 342, 347, 348.
Hasse, Ernst, Professor, 194, 200, 206, 206a, 212, 248, 258, 268, 299,
389.
Heckel, Karl, 182.
Heinsick, P., 179.
Helm, Willy, 25, 27, 166, 169, 487.
Hennig, Martin Chr. (b. 1864). Pastor. Director of Rauhes Haus, near
Hamburg, a famous home-mission centre and charitable institution,
53, 56, 97, 111, 113, 123, 312, 316, 397, 461, 470, 494, 497.
Heyking, Edmund, Freiherr v. (b. 1850). Ex-Consul in New York,
Valparaiso, Calcutta, etc., Minister in Morocco, Peking, Mexico,
Belgrade, 100.
Hort, J., 40.
Huber, E., Dr., 153.
Jannasch, Robert, Dr. Professor, 20, 226.
Kahl, Wilhelm (b. 1849). Dr. Jur., Theol., Med. Professor, Berlin,
52a, 55.
Kaiser Wilhelm II., 121, 136.
Keim, August Alexander (b. 1845). Major-General, 11, 271, 275, 277,
298.
Keutgen, Friedrich Wilhelm Eduard (b. 1861). Dr. Phil. Professor of
History, Hamburg. Formerly lived in Manchester, 456.
König, K., Pastor, 21b.
Kronprinz Wilhelm, 240, 294.
Kuhn, Karl A. Dozent in Military History, Charlottenburg, 46, 82, 84,
86, 87, 93, 230, 308, 311, 314, 315, 320, 382.
Lagarde, Paul Anton de (1827-1891). Biblical scholar and orientalist.
Real name, Bötticher, 199, 211.
Lahusen, D. (b. 1851). Pastor. Ober-Konsistorialrat.
General-Superintendent, Berlin, 423.
Lange, Friedrich (b. 1852). Dr. Phil. Journalist and educational
reformer, founder of various political associations, 3, 7, 14, 69,
71, 204, 207, 213, 213a, 219, 253, 302.
Lasaulx, Ernst v. (1805-1861). Archæologist and historian, 243, 250.
Lasson, Adolf (b. 1832). Dr. Theol., Phil., Jur., Geh. Regierungsrat.
Professor, Berlin. Real name said to be Lazarusson, 37, 39, 44, 49,
54, 66, 85, 164.
Lehmann, W., Pastor, 19, 21, 32, 43, 95, 101, 105, 106, 112, 122, 135,
137, 142.
Leonhard, Rudolf (b. 1851). Dr. Jur. Professor of Law, Breslau, 402.
Liebert, Eduard W.H. (b. 1850). Lieutenant-General, 208.
Lienhardt, F., 125.
Liszt, Franz v. (b. 1851). Dr. Jur., Geh. Justizrat. Professor,
Berlin. Very eminent jurist, 78, 309.
Litzmann, Berthold (b. 1857). Geh. Regierungsrat. Professor of Modern
German Literature, Bonn, 396.
Lösche, Bernhard, Pastor, Leipzig, 411, 411a, 440.
Meinecke, Friedrich (b. 1862). Dr. Phil., Geh. Hofrat. Professor of
History, Freiburg-in-Breisgau, 16, 64, 87a, 134, 390, 486.
Misch, Georg, 58, 63, 417.
Moltke, Graf Hellmuth v. (1800-1891), 244.
Münch, F.X., Pastor, 149.
Naumann, Friedrich (b. 1860). D.D., ex-Pastor, Member of Reichstag.
Noted writer on politics. Author of "Mitteleuropa", 103, 488.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1844-1900). The philosopher of the "Will
to Power" and of Immoralism. Went mad 1888, 256, 262, 269, 270, 273,
288, 292, 327, 329, 331, 333, 335, 337, 340, 343, 346, 352, 356.
Nippold, Otfried (b. 1864). Dr. Jur. Professor, 11, 192, 192a, 195,
208, 217, 218, 240a, 247, 252, 260, 263, 266, 271, 274, 275, 277,
298, 301, 304.
Oncken, Hermann (b. 1869). Professor of Modern History, Heidelberg,
499.
Pazaurek, Gustav E. (b. 1865). Dr. Phil. Professor, Stuttgart, 38, 73,
234.
Poehlmann, Christof Ludwig (b. 1867). Educationist, 92a, 186, 233.
Philippi, Felix (b. 1851). Well-known dramatist and critic, 96, 226a.
Pohl, Heinrich (b. 1871). Dr. Phil. Journalist, 215.
Preuss, Dr. Licentiate of Theology, 119, 150, 152, 162, 457.
Reimer, Joseph Ludwig (b. 1879). Author, 68, 70, 192b, 197, 197a, 203,
216, 224, 353, 387.
Reventlow, Ernst, Graf zu (b. 1869). Author of numerous works on
military, naval and political affairs. Understood to represent views
of Grand-Admiral v. Tirpitz, 373, 375.
Rieger, Franz. Feldmarschalleutnant, 161.
Riemasch, Otto, 398a.
Riesser, Jacob (b. 1853). Dr., Geh. Justizrat. Hon. Professor, Berlin.
Authority on Commercial Law, 454.
Roethe, Gustav (b. 1859). Dr. Phil, Geh. Regierungsrat. Professor,
Berlin. Philologist, 42, 52b, 59, 139a, 239a, 424, 431, 445.
Rohrbach, Paul (b. 1869), Dr. Phil. Late Imperial Commissioner for
Colonization of S.W. Africa. Noted authority on Colonial subjects,
238, 485, 489.
Rump, J., Pastor, 17, 35, 41, 52, 109, 114, 124, 127, 129, 133, 154,
158, 160, 171, 228, 444.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich D.E. (1768-1834). Eminent theologian and
philosopher., 397.
Schmid, H. Alfred (b. 1863). Dr. Phil. Professor of Art History,
Göttingen, 28.
Schmidt, Dr., of Gibichenfels, 260, 263.
Schmidt, Karl L.A., 167, 324, 401, 408a, 479.
Schmitz, Oskar A.H. (b. 1873). Author, 24, 34, 48, 62, 74, 181, 306,
313, 325, 399, 406, 420, 427, 442, 448, 468, 472, 482.
Schröer, M.M. Arnold (b. 1857). Dr. Phil. Professor of English
Language and Literature, Commercial High School, Cologne, 170, 437,
438, 455, 458, 460, 463, 465, 474, 476, 483.
Schulze-Gaevernitz, Gerhart v. (b. 1864). Geh. Hofrat. Prussian
Minister of State. Well-known economist, 393.
Schuster, Hermann. Oberlehrer, Hanover, 466.
Seeberg, Reinhold (b. 1859). Dr. Theol., Jur., Phil., Geheimrat.
Professor of Theology, Berlin, 464.
Siemens, Otto, 236, 433, 434, 443.
Sombart, Werner (b. 1863). Professor of Economics, Commercial High
School, Berlin. Author of more than 100 works, some translated into
English, 18, 22, 30, 33, 61, 67, 118, 128, 132, 142, 239, 305a, 317,
319, 405, 425, 432, 481.
Stipberger, Court Preacher (?Bavarian), 151.
Stirner, Max (1806-1856). The philosopher of "Egoism." Real name,
Kaspar Schmidt, 385.
Strantz, Kurd Ludwig Immanuel v., Freier und Edler Herr zu Tüllstedt,
etc. (b. 1863). Ex-diplomatist. Author of "Do you want Alsace and
Lorraine? We will take Lorraine and more!", 175, 176, 379.
Tannenberg, Otto Richard, 2a.
Theuden, Rudolf, 91, 225a, 495.
Tolzien, Pastor, 130, 146, 147, 419, 428, 446.
Traub, Gottfried (b. 1869). Pastor, 131, 157, 357, 359.
Treitschke, Heinrich v. (1834-1896). Politician-historian and
panegyrist of the House of Hohenzollern. Stone deaf from childhood,
1, 6, 8, 15, 206b, 210, 214, 223a, 245, 245a, 255, 272, 328, 332,
355, 362, 364, 366, 368, 370, 372, 374, 392.
Troeltsch, Ernst D. (b. 1865). Dr. Phil, Jur. Professor of Systematic
Theology, Heidelberg, 90.
Vietinghoff-Scheel, Hermann E.L.O., Freiherr v. (b. 1856). General of
Cavalry, 195.
Vorwerk, Karl Wilhelm Dietrich (b. 1870). Pastor, and author of books
on religion and child-psychology, 98, 156, 425a.
Wagner, Klaus, 70a, 196, 200a, 248a, 249a, 257, 292a.
Wagner, Reinhold. Lieutenant-Colonel, 413.
Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, Ulrich v. (b. 1848). Dr. Phil., Jur. Professor,
Berlin. A classical scholar of the highest distinction, 54b, 72,
173, 173a, 227, 307, 418, 421, 453, 498.
Wildenbruch, Ernst v. (1845-1909). Poet, and writer of patriotic
dramas, 4.
Wirth, Albrecht (b. 1866). Dr. Political writer and lecturer, 177,
205, 222, 363.
Wolzogen, Hans Paul, Freiherr v. (b. 1848). Well-known writer,
especially on music. Leading Wagnerian, 45, 47, 104, 110, 139, 144,
310, 321.
Wrochem, Alfred K.E. v. (b. 1857). Major-General, 192a, 217, 304.
Wundt, Wilhelm M. (b. 1832). Dr. Phil., Med., Jur., Geheimrat.
Celebrated philosopher and physiological psychologist, 430, 447,
478.
Zimmermann, A. Dr., 178.
* * * * *
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