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Updated: June 3, 2025
He may have experimented on cultures of microbes for a generation; and then he calls on earth and heaven to acknowledge the mystery of the self-creation of the universe. We hear much of Treitschke today no doubt a man of genius with a gift for research but what ferocious pyrotechnics were poured forth by this apostle of mendacious swagger.
"The braggart feebleness which travesties strength, the immoral claim which swaggers in the sanctity of historical right, the timidity which shelters its indecision behind empty and formal excuses, never were more despised than by the great Prussian King," so H. v. Treitschke tells us.
Following up the war teachings of Nietzsche and Treitschke and others, General Von Bernhardi issued book after book defining in clear language the alleged national beneficence, biological desirability and inevitability of war, which, when it came, would be "fought to conquer for Germany the rank of a world-power;" the universities and schools and press teemed with militarist ideals and practices; the army charges rose to $250,000,000 and the trained soldiers available at the beginning of 1910 were alleged to have 6,000 field-guns; Colonel Gaedke, the German naval expert, stated on February 24th of that year that the German government was building a fleet of 58 battleships and that "the time is gradually approaching when the German fleet will be superior to all the fleets of the world, with the single exception of the English fleet," and that in the past twelve years Germany had spent on new ships alone 63,200,000 pounds, or $316,000,000, while between then and 1914 she would spend 57,500,000 pounds more, or $287,500,000.
He must possess a strong and dominating character. He must be a great literary artist. He must be a clear, a bold, and an independent thinker. The following pages will show in how eminent a degree Treitschke possessed all those qualities and how unreservedly they were placed at the service of the Prussian cause.
These louts cannot be informed or argued with; they are interested in no one but themselves, and naked self-assertion is their only idea of political argument. Treitschke, who was for twenty years Professor of History at Berlin, and who did perhaps more than any other man to build up the modern German creed, has crystallized German politics in a single sentence.
Have you ever read the works of those German writers men like Bernhardi and Treitschke and Nietzsche, and others of that school? Do you know that their teaching is the religion of the war party in Germany, and that that war party rules the Empire? Do you know that it is the avowed determination of Germany to conquer the world by the sword? You do know it?
The doctrine has in itself a rude barbaric simplicity: what is utterly revolting in the neo-Germanic presentment is its moral veneer the talk of war as the fruit of 'political idealism' and the expression of the 'social organism': the talk of 'historical development' as invalidating supposed 'rights' like the neutrality of Belgium; above all, the talk of power as 'the vehicle of the highest culture'. Treitschke, a stern Protestant, seeks to reconcile the doctrine with Christianity; but the doctrine is all the same pagan.
Treitschke taught it to the youth of Germany as applied to war, not the necessity for defense but the justice and the righteousness of aggressive warfare. The Emperor and his court hailed these teachings with great acclaim. Chamberlain, an Englishman, printed a book to show that all good things were German; that the great Italian art-workers were German; that Christ himself was of German origin.
"A sacrifice made to an alien nation," said Treitschke, "is immoral. . . . "Among all political sins, the sin of feebleness is the most contemptible. It is the political sin against the Holy Ghost." It also explained their violation of the Belgian treaty.
The theories built up on this point in the last sixty years by the German professors, notably by Giesbrecht, the historian of the Ottos and the Hohenstaufens, and Treitschke, the historian of the Hohenzollerns, do not necessarily carry conviction but are at least impressive; and the work of these two writers, which we do not know as well as we should, and of Treitschke in particular possessed in Germany an influence that sank deep into every mind, far exceeding that of Nietzsche, which we looked upon as preponderant.
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