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Who would accuse the one who triumphs? . . . Professor Hans Delbruck has written with reason, 'Blessed be the hand that falsified the telegram of Ems!" It was convenient to have the war break out immediately, in order that events might result favorably for Germany, whose enemies are totally unprepared. Preventive war was recommended by General Bernhardi and other illustrious patriots.
The defeat of France was not, however, regarded by Germans as a mere incident in a war against Russia; for it was a cardinal point in the programme of the militarists, whose mind was indiscreetly revealed by Bernhardi, that France must be so completely crushed that she could never again cross Germany's path.
Although the author believes, of course, that Germany stands in the forefront of civilization and has a monopoly of the highest culture, yet his book is singularly free from the one great blemish which defaces most German books on international politics—namely, systematic depreciation of the foreigner. Von Bernhardi does not assume that France is played out or that England is effete.
Bosanquet thinks that the lack of political liberty in Germany has had the effect of producing self-consciousness, and a morbid interest in small distinctions of title and rank, and that it is thwarted national ambition that has expressed itself in such writers as Treitschke and Bernhardi.
Bernhardi argued most earnestly, that if a treaty placed a difficulty in the way of a great nation's realising its purposes, then it was not only justifiable, but the duty of that nation to break that treaty. "We must not hold back in the hard struggle for the sovereignty of the world," he argued. Every nation that stood in their way must be swept aside.
They remind us of a Treitschke or a Bernhardi writing smugly of the moral grandeur of war, the need to brace the slackness of human nature periodically by war, the chivalry and devotion it calls out, and so on. Still worse is the theory of those who regard war frankly as a curse, yet put it to the direct authorship of the Almighty.
America is a great, a growing, and a self-respecting Power; yet Americans see no ground for that inevitable conflict of interests between their country and Great Britain which forms the theme of so many German books, from Prince Bülow's candid self-revelations down to less responsible writers like Bernhardi. The explanation lies in the nature of German thought and ambitions.
Greater power and more mighty mediation are needed to save and deliver me, and behold, my Margery, meseems hear me Margery meseems a special ruling of Heaven hath sent. . . . When is it that his Eminence Cardinal Bernhardi will return from England?" Hereupon I saw plainly what was in the wind.
They have seized it with a punctuality that must flatter Von Bernhardi, even though the compliment be at the expense of his own country. The Kaiser did not give them credit for being keener Junkers than his own. It was an unpleasant, indeed an infuriating surprise.
The great culture peoples do not hate one another. Next on the black list, comes General Frederick von Bernhardi, with his Germany and the Next War, the need to obliterate France, while giving the needed chastisement to England.
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