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Updated: June 3, 2025
Events have shown how little even Treitschke realized the strength of the Prussian State and the fanaticism of German nationalism.
The day is surely over when sophists like Treitschke and callous soldiers like Bernhardi could sing the praises of war. The pathetic picture drawn by our great novelist of a worthless young lord lying at the feet of his opponent touched England profoundly and hastened the end of the duel in this country.
This willingness to put liberty before unity, and respect and honor the dignity of other nations while at the same time serving its own, was not extinguished in Germany with Leibnitz and Kant. Permit me, my dear Director, on this subject to indulge in some personal reminiscences. *Treitschke Versus Bluntschli.*
Men like Schücking and Quidde and Fried are at least as well known as men like Treitschke and Bernhardi. Opinion in Germany, as in every other country, has been various and conflicting. And the pacific tendencies have been better organized, if not more active, there than elsewhere, for they have been associated with the huge and disciplined forces of the Social-Democrats.
But worse even than the small States is the neutral State. A neutral State in political life is as much a monstrosity as a neutral sexless animal in the natural world. A State like Belgium is only the parasite of the larger neighbouring States. Treitschke never mentions Belgium without an outburst of contempt.
Hence Bernhardi writes: 'the maintenance of peace never can or may be the goal of a policy'. War, war the 'strong medicine', the teacher of heroism, and, as Bernhardi adds to Treitschke, the inevitable biological law, the force that spreads the finest culture war is the law of humanity. And this war is offensive as well as defensive primarily, indeed, offensive.
But all those artistic gifts would not have given him his commanding influence in the world of practical politics if he had not added the gifts of clear thinking and luminous exposition, which are so very rare in Germany. Treitschke is essentially an honest and systematic thinker.
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.
The statement exactly expresses the ideas on the subject attributed abroad to the Emperor. The distinguished German historian, Heinrich von Treitschke, writes of King Frederick William IV, the predecessor of Emperor William I, as follows: "He believed in a mysterious enlightenment which is granted 'von Gottes Gnaden' to kings rather than other mortals.
If Treitschke, too, believed in force, he had a high moral ideal for his nation. The other nations are feeble and decadent. Germany is to hold the sceptre of the nations, so as to ensure the peace of the world. It is only in Bernhardi that we find war in itself glorified as the stimulus of nations.
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