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We have the spirit with which the Germans have waged the war, we have the motive for which they have waged it, and we have the ultimate purpose which they hope to achieve—namely, to force upon a subjected Europe the rule of the super-race of Treitschke and the bionda bestia of Nietzsche.
Treitschke often reminds one of a writer whom of all others he most cordially detests. Like Heine, Treitschke is incisive, epigrammatic. His phrase has always muscle and nerve: it has warmth and fervour. Treitschke has not the gift of humour. A German seldom possesses that redeeming gift.
The popularity of such writers as Von Treitschke and Bernhardi, respecting which so much has been written, is indeed significant of a vast change in German moral conceptions.
People want to smash England, of course, because, as they explain, she brought on the war and is trying to starve them, and they roar with the applause when the lightning-change man at the Wintergarten impersonates Hindenburg, because Hindenburg is a grand old scout who is keeping those millions of slovenly Russians from overrunning our tidy, busy, well-ordered Germany. But Treitschke who was he?
Curious experience with a member of the Chinese Legation at a court reception. Sundry German public men. My relations with professors at the Berlin University. Lepsius, Curtius, Gneist, Von Sybel, Droysen. Hermann Grimm and his wife. Treitschke. Statements of Du Bois-Reymond regarding the expulsion of the Huguenots from France. Helmholtz and Hoffmann; a Scotch experience of the latter.
It has seemed worth while to describe this philosophy of life, because it is not only the philosophy of a professor like Treitschke, but also that of a soldier like Bernhardi; and not only so, but it is the philosophy of the Prussian Government.
Every treaty or promise made by a state, Treitschke holds, is to be understood as limited by the proviso rebus sic stantibus. 'A state cannot bind its will for the future over against other states. International treaties are no absolute limitation, but a voluntary self-limitation of the state, and only for such time as the state may find to be convenient.
But it is undeniable that Germanism, like Judaism, has evolved a doctrine of special election. Spiritual in the teaching of Fichte and Treitschke, the doctrine became gross and narrow in the Deutsche Religion of Friedrich Lange. "The German people is the elect of God and its enemies are the enemies of the Lord."
In a great civilized State it is the duties which must be fulfilled as Treitschke, our great historian and national politician, tells us that determine the expenditure, and the great Finance Minister is not the man who balances the national accounts by sparing the national forces, while renouncing the politically indispensable outlay, but he who stimulates all the live forces of the nation to cheerful activity, and so employs them for national ends that the State revenue suffices to meet the admitted political demands.
I have confined myself to expounding the doctrines of Treitschke. I have not attempted to refute them. It is not my object to denounce: there is always a sufficient number of publicists ever ready to undertake the task of denunciation. I am only trying to understand. Nor have I dwelt on any side-issues.
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