CHAPTER IV THE NEW MORALISTS

The dream of German expansion, as year by year it took firmer hold upon the popular imagination, produced, as might have been expected, a desire that it might be realised. From the stage of vague and ardent longing it was but a short way to the next, where a determined will began to put forth efforts towards achievement. But as mankind in the mass, whether in Germany or England, is still to some extent hampered by human nature, by a number of habits, traditions, and instincts, and by various notions of good and evil, justice and injustice—which the subtlest philosophers and most eloquent rhetoricians have not yet succeeded in eradicating—a need was felt for what the text-books in their solemn nomenclature call an ethical basis. In plain words, the German people wanted to have right on their side—if possible, old-fashioned, Sunday-school, copy-book Right. Failing that, even such a plea as the wolf maintained against the lamb would be a great deal better than nothing.

This tendency in a nation to look about for justification and a righteous plea, when it is preparing to possess itself of property belonging to its neighbours, is for the most part a subconscious process, not only {114} among the common people, but also among the leaders themselves. It resembles the instinct among hens which produces in them an appetite for lime when the season has come to begin laying. It was through some natural impulse of this sort, and not through mere cynicism, hypocrisy, or cool calculation, that German publicists discovered all the grievances which have been already touched upon. For even if the possession of these grievances did not altogether give the would-be aggressors right up to the point of righteousness, it certainly put their neighbours in the wrong, and branded the French dove and the British lamb with turpitude in the eyes of the German people. The grievances against France were, that although she had been vanquished in 1870, although her population had actually decreased since that date, and although therefore she had neither the right to nor any need for expansion, she had nevertheless expanded in Africa as well as in the East, to a far greater extent than Germany herself, the victorious power, whose own population had meanwhile been increasing by leaps and bounds.

GRIEVANCES AGAINST ENGLAND

The grievances against Britain were that she was supposed to have made war upon German trade, to have prevented her young rival from acquiring colonies, and to have intrigued to surround the Teuton peoples with a ring of foes. Britain had helped France to occupy and hold her new territories. Britain had been mainly responsible for the diplomatic defeat of Germany at Algeciras in 1905 and again over Agadir in 1911. Moreover when Germany, during the South African war, had attempted, in the interests of international morality, to combine the nations against us, we had foiled her high-minded {115} and unselfish endeavours. When at an earlier date she had sought, by the seizure of Kiao-Chau and by a vigorous concentration, to oust British influence and trade from their position of predominance in China, we had countered her efforts by the occupation of Wei-hai-wei and the Japanese alliance.

As regards command of the sea we had likewise frustrated German ambitions. After a certain amount of vacillation, and a somewhat piteous plea for a general diminution of armaments—backed up by an arrest of our own, which Germany interpreted, perhaps not unnaturally, as a throwing up of the sponge and beginning of the end of our naval supremacy—we had actually had the treachery (for it was nothing less) to upset all her calculations, and turn all her efforts and acceleration to foolishness, by resuming the race for sea-power with redoubled energy. And although to our own eyes, and even possibly to the eyes of impartial observers, none of these doings of ours—in so far as they were truly alleged—could be rightly held to constitute any real grievance, that consideration was irrelevant. For when a man is in search of a grievance he will find it, if he be earnest enough, in the mere fact that his intended adversary stammers, or has a wart upon his nose.

German statesmen were happy in having established these grievances to their own satisfaction; but something more was necessary in order that their morality might rest upon a sure foundation. German policy must be absolutely right, and not merely relatively right by contrast with those neighbours whose power she sought to overthrow, and whose territories she wished to annex. And although this {116} effort to establish German policy on the principle of Right involved a recasting of Christian morality, it was not shirked on that account. On the contrary it was undertaken in a most energetic spirit.

The first great influence in this readjustment of popular conceptions of right and wrong was the historian Heinrich von Treitschke.[1] He boldly differentiated the moral obligations of the private individual from those of a government charged with the destinies of a nation.[2] The duties of a man to his family, neighbours, and society Treitschke left undisturbed. In this sphere of human life the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount not only remained unchallenged, but was upheld and reinforced. Statecraft, however, fell under a different category.

THE STATE IS POWER

The true principle of private conduct was Love for one's Neighbour, but the true principle of the state was Power. The duty of a virtuous ruler was to seek power, more power, and always more power, on behalf of the nation he was called upon to govern. The internal power of the state over the action of its own subjects was absolute, and it was a duty owed by each generation of rulers to posterity, to see to it that in their own time, the external power of the {117} state was increased at the expense of its neighbours.[3] To secure this end wars were inevitable; and despite the sufferings which wars entailed, they were far from regrettable, for the reason that they preserved the vigour, unity, and devotion of the race, while stimulating the virtues of courage and self-sacrifice among private citizens.[4]

Nations, he maintained, cannot safely stand still. They must either increase their power or lose it, expand their territories or be prepared to see them shorn away. No growth of spiritual force or material well-being within the state will preserve it, if it fails to extend its authority and power among its neighbours. Feelings of friendliness, chivalry, and pity are absurd as between nations. To speak even of justice in such a connection is absurd. Need and Might together constitute Right. Nor ought the world to regret the eating-up of weak nations by the strong, of small nations by the great, because—a somewhat bold conclusion—great and powerful nations alone are capable of producing what the world requires in thought, art, action, and virtue. For how can these things flourish nobly in a timid, cowering state, which finds itself driven by force of circumstances to make-believes and fictions, to {118} the meanest supplications and to devices of low cunning, in order to preserve an independence which, as it can only exist on sufferance, is nothing better than a sham?[5]

As the Hohenzollerns, the noblest and most capable of modern dynasties, had never been content merely to reign, but had always maintained their 'divine right' of ruling and dominating the Prussian Kingdom—as Prussia itself, the most manly and energetic of modern nations, had not been content merely to serve as the figurehead of a loose confederation, but had insisted upon becoming supreme master and imposing its own system, policy, and ideals upon all Germany—so was it the duty and destiny of united Germany, under these happy auspices, having been taught and seasoned by long centuries of stern and painful apprenticeship, to issue forth in the meridian vigour of her age and seize upon the Mastery of the World.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

If Treitschke, the eloquent historian, succeeded to his own satisfaction and that of a very large proportion of German statesmen, soldiers, intellectuals, and publicists in taking high policy altogether out of the jurisdiction of Christian morals, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche,[6] the even more eloquent and infinitely more subtle poet-philosopher, made a cleaner and {119} bolder cut, and got rid of Christian morality even in the sphere of private conduct.

Nietzsche was but little interested or concerned in the practical problems of statecraft which engrossed the patriotic mind of Treitschke. The destinies of the German nation were for him a small matter in comparison with those of the human race. But nevertheless his vigorously expressed contempt for the English, their ways of life and thought, the meanness of their practical aims, and the degradation of their philosophic ideals,[7] was comforting to his fellow-countrymen, who were relieved to find that the nation whom they desired to despoil was so despicable and corrupt. This train of argument was deceptive and somewhat dangerous; for it led his German readers to overlook the fact, that the broad front of his attack aimed at enveloping and crushing the cherished traditions of the Teuton race no less than those of the Anglo-Saxon.[8]

{120}

Nietzsche's derision and dislike of the Prussian spirit, of militarism, and of what he conceived to be the spurious principle of nationality, his vague, disinterested cosmopolitanism or Europeanism, are as the poles apart from the aims and ideas of Treitschke and the German patriots.[9] Nietzsche is not concerned to evolve a sovereign and omnipotent state, but a high overmastering type of man, who shall inherit the earth and dominate—not for their good, but for his own—the millions who inhabit it. His ideal is a glorious aristocracy of intellect, beauty, courage, self-control, felicity, and power, scornfully smiling, exuberantly vital. The evolution, ever higher and higher, of this fine oligarchy of super-men is the one absolute end of human endeavour. The super-men will use and direct the force and instincts of 'the herd'—even the capacities of kings, soldiers, law-givers, {121} and administrators—to make the world a fit place for their own development. The millions of slaves are to be considered merely as a means to this end. Concern about them for their own sakes, above all pity for their sufferings, or regard on the part of the super-men for their resentment—except to guard against it—is a mistake. The serenity of the superman must not allow itself to be disturbed and distracted by any such considerations. It is for him to take what he needs or desires, to impose order on the world, so that it may be a fit environment for the evolution of his own caste, and, so far as he can compass it, to live like the gods.[10]

THE BLONDE BRUTE

It is clear that although Nietzsche chaunts a p?an in admiration of "the magnificent blonde brute, avidly rampant for spoil and victory,"[11] and although he is constantly found, as it were, humming this refrain, he had no intention of taking the Prussian as his ideal type—still less of personifying Prussia itself as a super-state engaged in a contest for supremacy with a herd of inferior nations. He does not trouble himself in the least about nations, but only about individual men. Yet, like others who have had the gift of memorable speech, he might {122} well marvel, were he still alive, at the purposes to which his words have been turned by orators and journalists, desirous to grind an edge on their own blunt axes.

General von Bernhardi[12] may be taken as a type of the sincere but unoriginal writer who turns all texts to the support of his own sermon. He is an honest, literal fellow. In spite of all his ecstatic flights of rhetoric he is never at all in the clouds—never any farther from the earth's surface than hopping distance. Notwithstanding, he quietly appropriates any Nietzschean aphorisms the sound and shape of which appear to suit his purpose, and uses them to drive home his very simple and concrete proposition that it is the duty of Germany to conquer the world.

One imagines from his writings that Bernhardi has no quarrel with Christianity, no wish whatsoever to overturn our accepted notions of morality. He is merely a soldier with a fixed idea, and he is very much in earnest. His literary methods remind one somewhat of the starlings in spring-time, perched on the backs of sheep and cattle, picking off the loose hairs to line their nests. This is the highly practical and soldierly use to which he puts philosophers, poets, and men of letters generally—laying them under contribution to garnish his discourse.

INFLUENCE OF PHILOSOPHY

It is probably true that the average soldier who fought on the German side at Ypres and elsewhere {123} was hardly more conversant with the writings of Treitschke, Nietzsche, and Bernhardi than the average British soldier opposed to him was with those of Herbert Spencer, Mr. Bernard Shaw, and Mr. Norman Angell. It is very unlikely, however, that the battle of Ypres would ever have been fought had it not been for the ideas which sprang from these and similar sources. The influence of the written and spoken word upon German policy and action is glaringly manifest.[13] It inspired and supported the high bureaucrats at Berlin, and had equally to do, if indirectly, with the marching of the humblest raw recruits shoulder to shoulder to be shot down on the Menin Road. For by a process of percolation through the press and popular literature, the doctrines of these teachers—diluted somewhat, it is true, and a good deal disguised and perverted—had reached a very wide audience. Though the names of these authors were for the most part unknown, though their opinions had never been either understood or accepted by the common people, the effects of their teaching had made themselves felt in every home in Germany.

The German private soldier would not have been shot down unless these eloquent sermons had been preached. None the less, he had never grasped or understood, far less had he adhered to and professed, the cardinal doctrines which they contained. He still believed in the old-fashioned morality, and thought that states as well as individual men were bound to act justly. It was this faith which gave {124} him his strength, and made him die gladly. For he believed that Germany had acted justly, the Allies unjustly, that it was his task, along with other good men and true, to win victory for his Emperor and safety for his Fatherland, and to crush the treacherous and malignant aggressors.

In spite of all this preliminary discoursing which had been going on for many years past, like artillery preparation before an infantry attack—about world-power, will-to-power, and all the rest of it—nothing is more remarkable than the contrast presented, immediately after war broke out, between the blatancy of those writers who had caused the war and the bleating of those (in many cases the same) who sought to justify Germany's part in it to their countrymen and the world.

On the enlightened principles of Treitschke and Bernhardi, Britain would have acted not only wisely, but in the strictest accordance with her duty to her own state, had she indeed contrived and compassed this war, believing circumstances to be favourable for herself and unfavourable for Germany. Not another shred of right or reason was required.[14] But when war actually burst out, all these new-fangled doctrines went by the board. Though the ink was hardly dry upon Bernhardi's latest exhortation—of which several hundred thousand copies had been sold, and in which he urged his fellow-countrymen to watch their time and make war when it suited them, without remorse and no matter on what {125} plea—in spite of this fact, there was a singular lack of Stoicism among 'the brethren' when war was declared against Russia and France. When Britain joined in, and when things began to go less well than had been expected, Stoicism entirely disappeared. Indeed there is something highly ludicrous, at the same time painful—like all spectacles of human abasement—in the chorus of whines and shrill execration, which at once went up to heaven from that very pedantocracy whose leaders, so short a time before, had been preaching that, as between the nations of the earth, Might is Right, and Craft is the trusty servant of Might.[15]

APOSTASY WHEN WAR CAME

These scolding fakirs were of an infinite credulity, inasmuch as they believed that Sir Edward Grey was the reincarnation of Machiavelli. Yet on their own principles, what was there in this discovery to be in the least shocked at? British statesmen (it is hardly necessary to repeat it) had not walked in the footsteps of the Florentine; had not provoked the war; had not wished for it; had tried with all their might to prevent it; but if they had done the very reverse, would they not merely have been {126} taking a leaf out of the sacred book of the pedantocracy—out of Bernhardi's book, out of Nietzsche's book, out of Treitschke's book? Why, then, all these unpleasant howlings and ravings?

The answers are not hard to find. The careful plans and theories of the German bureaucrats had been turned topsy-turvy because England had joined in the war when, according to the calculations of the augurs, she should have remained neutral. That mistake must have been sufficiently annoying in itself to disturb the equanimity even of professional philosophers. And further, in spite of all the ingenious, eloquent, and sophistical exhortations of the prophets, the old morality still kept its hold upon the hearts of men. When trouble arose they turned to it instinctively—priesthood as well as people—and the later gospel fell flat like a house of cards. Immediately war came there was an appeal to old-fashioned justice, and the altars of the little, new-fangled, will-to-power gods were deserted by their worshippers.

When statesmen are laying out policies, and moralists are setting up systems, it is worth their while to make certain that they are not, in fact, engaged upon an attempt to make water flow uphill; above all, that their ingenious new aqueducts will actually hold water, which in this instance they certainly did not.


[1] Heinrich von Treitschke, son of a Saxon general of Bohemian-Slavonic origin; born at Dresden 1834. Deafness following upon a fever in childhood prevented him from adopting the profession of arms; 1858-1863 lectured on history at Leipzig; 1863-1866 professor at Freiburg; 1866-1874 professor at Heidelberg; 1874 until his death in 1896 professor of history and politics at Berlin.

[2] "Thus it follows from this, that we must distinguish between public and private morality. The order of rank of the various duties must necessarily be for the State, as it is power, quite other than for individual men. A whole series of these duties, which are obligatory on the individual, are not to be thought of in any case for the State. To maintain itself counts for it always as the highest commandment; that is absolutely moral for it. And on that account we must declare that of all political sins that of weakness is the most reprehensible and the most contemptible; it is in politics the sin against the Holy Ghost...."—Selections, p. 32.

[3] "That must not hinder us from declaring joyfully that the gifted Florentine, with all the vast consequence of his thinking, was the first to set in the centre of all politics the great thought: The State is power. For that is the truth; and he who is not man enough to look this truth in the face ought to keep his hands off politics."—Ibid. p. 28.

[4] "... to the historian who lives in the world of will it is immediately clear that the demand for a perpetual peace is thoroughly reactionary; he sees that with war all movement, all growth, must be struck out of history. It has always been the tired, unintelligent, and enervated periods that have played with the dream of perpetual peace...."—Selections, p. 25.

"It is precisely political idealism that demands wars, while materialism condemns them. What a perversion of morality to wish to eliminate heroism from humanity!"—Ibid. p. 24.

[5] "... if we survey history in the mass, it is clear that all real masterpieces of poetry and art arose upon the soil of great nationalities;" and "The poet and artist must be able to react upon a great nation. When did a masterpiece ever arise among a petty little nation?"—Ibid. p. 19.

[6] Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, son of a village pastor of Polish ancestry; born at R?cken in Saxony 1844; served in the German army for a few months in 1867; injured in mounting his horse; 1869-1879 professor of classical philology at Bale which entailed naturalisation as a Swiss subject; served in ambulance in war of 1870-1871; 1879-1889 in bad health, wrote and travelled; 1889 became insane and remained so till his death in 1900.

[7] "What is lacking in England, and has always been lacking, that half-actor and rhetorician knew well enough, the absurd muddlehead, Carlyle, who sought to conceal under passionate grimaces what he knew about himself: namely, what was lacking in Carlyle, real power of intellect, real depth of intellectual perception, in short, philosophy."—Beyond Good and Evil, p. 210.

"The Englishman, more gloomy, sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the German—is for that very reason, as the baser of the two, also the most pious."—Ibid. p. 211.

"The English coarseness and rustic demureness is still more satisfactorily disguised by Christian pantomime, and by praying and psalm-singing (or, more correctly, it is thereby explained and differently expressed); and for the herd of drunkards and rakes who formerly learned moral grunting under the influence of Methodism (and more recently as the 'Salvation Army'), a penitential fit may really be the relatively highest manifestation of 'humanity' to which they can be elevated."—Ibid. p. 211.

"The European ignobleness, the plebeianism of modern ideas, is England's work and invention."—Ibid. p. 213.

[8] "I believe only in French culture, and regard everything else in Europe which calls itself 'culture' as a misunderstanding. I do not even take the German kind into consideration.... The few instances of higher culture with which I have met in Germany were all French in their origin."—Ecce Homo, p. 27.

"Wherever Germany extends her sway, she ruins culture."—Ibid. p. 38.

"Culture and the state are antagonists: a 'culture-state' is merely a modern idea. The one lives upon the other, the one flourishes at the expense of the other. All great periods of culture have been periods of political decline; that which was great from the standpoint of culture was always unpolitical—even anti-political.... In the history of European culture the rise of the (German) Empire signifies, above all, a displacement of the centre of gravity. Everywhere people are already aware of this: in things that really matter—and these after all constitute culture—the Germans are no longer worth considering.... The fact that there is no longer a single German philosopher worth mentioning is an increasing wonder."—The Twilight of the Idols, p. 54.

"Every great crime against culture for the last four centuries lies on their [the German] conscience.... It was the Germans who caused Europe to lose the fruits, the whole meaning of her last period of greatness—the period of the Renaissance...."—Ecce Homo, p. 124.

"The future of German culture rests with the sons of Prussian officers."—The Genealogy of Morals, p. 222.

"If any one wishes to see the 'German soul' demonstrated ad oculos, let him only look at German taste, at German arts and manners: what boorish indifference to 'taste'!"—The Antichrist.

[9] "What quagmires and mendacity there must be about if it is possible, in the modern European hotchpotch, to raise questions of race."

A Nation—"Men who speak one language and read the same newspapers."—The Genealogy of Morals, p. 226.

[10] "A boldly daring, splendidly overbearing, high-flying, and aloft-up-dragging class of higher men, who had first to teach their century—and it is the century of the masses—the conception 'higher man.'"—Beyond Good and Evil, p. 219.

"This man of the future, this tocsin of noon and of the great verdict, which renders the will again free, who gives back to the world its goal and to man his hope, this Antichrist and Antinihilist, this conqueror of God and of Nothingness—he must one day come."—The Genealogy of Morals, p. 117.

[11] "The blonde beast that lies at the core of all aristocratic races."—The Genealogy of Morals, p. 42.

"The profound, icy mistrust which the German provokes, as soon as he arrives at power,—even at the present time,—is always still an aftermath of that inextinguishable horror with which for whole centuries Europe has regarded the wrath of the blonde Teuton beast."—Ibid.

[12] Friedrich von Bernhardi: born 1849 at St. Petersburg, where his father Theodor von Bernhardi was a Councillor of the Prussian Legation; entered a Hussar regiment in 1869; military attaché at Berne in 1881; in 1897 he was chief of the General Staff of the 16th Army Corps; in 1908 he was appointed commander of the 7th Army Corps; retired in the following year. He was a distinguished cavalry general, and is probably the most influential German writer on current politico-military problems.

[13] Probably not less so upon British policy and inaction. As water is the result of blending oxygen and hydrogen in certain proportions, so is the present war the resultant of German militarism and British anti-militarism in combination.

[14] "Every State has as sovereign the undoubted right to declare war when it chooses, consequently every State is in the position of being able to cancel any treaties which have been concluded."—Treitschke, Selections, p. 15.

"It is not only the right, but the moral and political duty of the statesman to bring about a war."—Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War, p. 41

[15] Towards the end of March 1915 General von Bernhardi published in the New York Sun an article the object of which was to explain to the American people how much his previous writings had been misunderstood and perverted by the malice of the enemy. Long before this date, however, there was strong presumptive evidence that the distinguished military author was unfavourably regarded by the Super-men at Berlin. He had been useful before the war for preparing the Teutonic youth for Armageddon; but after hostilities began it was discovered that, so far as neutral opinion was concerned, it would have been better had he been wholly interdicted from authorship under the national motto—verboten. As to the tenour of imperial communications to the popular fire-eating publicist during the winter 1914-1915, might we venture to paraphrase them into the vulgar vernacular as follows?—"We've got to thank you and your damned books, more than anything else, for the present mess with America. Get busy, and explain them all away if you can."—Any one of the labours of Hercules was easier.