Gems (?) of German Thought Part 11

283. A pacific agreement with England is a will-o'-the-wisp which no serious German statesman would trouble to follow. We must always keep the possibility of war with England before our eyes, and arrange our political and military plans accordingly.--GENERAL V. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 99.

284. Since the struggle is, as appears on a thorough investigation of the international question, necessary and inevitable, we must fight it out, cost what it may.... We have fought in the last great wars for our national union and our position among the Powers of _Europe_; we must now decide whether we wish to develop into and maintain a _World Empire_, and procure for German spirit and German ideas that fit recognition which has been hitherto withheld from them.--GENERAL V.

BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 103.

285. If we wish to compete further with them [the other Powers] a policy which our population and our civilization both ent.i.tle and compel us to adopt, we must not hold back in the hard struggle for the sovereignty of the world.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 79.

285a. All that other nations attained in centuries of natural development--political union, colonial possessions, naval power, international trade--was denied to our nation until quite recently.

What we now wish to attain must be _fought for_, and won, against a superior force of hostile interests and powers.--GENERAL V. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 84.

286. Since almost every part of the globe is inhabited, new territory must, as a rule, be obtained at the cost of its possessors--that is to say, by conquest, which thus becomes a law of necessity.--GENERAL v.

BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 21.

287. Success is necessary to gain influence over the ma.s.ses, and this influence can only be obtained by continually appealing to the national imagination and enlisting its interest in great universal ideas and great national ambitions.... We Germans have a far greater and more urgent duty towards civilization to perform than the Great Asiatic Power. We, like the j.a.panese, can only fulfil it by the sword.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 258.

=War need not be Defensive.=

288. Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say unto you, it is the good war which halloweth every cause.--FR. NIETZSCHE, Z., "War and Warriors."

289. We must not think merely of external foes who compel us to fight.

A war may seem to be forced upon a statesman by the condition of home affairs, or by the pressure of the whole political situation.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 38.

290. The moral duty of the State towards its citizens is to begin the struggle while the prospects of success and the political circ.u.mstances are still tolerably favourable. When, on the other hand, the hostile States are weakened or hampered by affairs at home and abroad, but its own warlike strength shows elements of superiority, it is imperative to use the favourable circ.u.mstances to promote its own political aims.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 53.

291. The lessons of history confirm the view that wars which have been deliberately provoked by far-seeing statesmen have had the happiest results.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 45.

_See also No. 382._

=Contempt for Peace.=

292. Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars--and the short peace more than the long.--FR. NIETZSCHE, Z., "War and Warriors."

292a. Only over the black gate of the cemetery ... can we read the words, "Eternal peace for all peoples." For peoples who live and strive, the only maxim and motto must be Eternal War.--K. WAGNER, K., p. 217.

293. The reception of the Tsar's [Peace] Manifesto was anything but friendly.... The learned world, also, was for the most part hostile to the idea underlying the Manifesto, and such a man as Mommsen could even, amid great applause, characterize the proposed Conference as "a misprint in world-history."--A.H. FRIED, H.D.F., Vol. I., p. 205.

294. The German who loves his people, and believes in the greatness and the future of our home ... must not let himself be lazily sung to sleep by the peace-lullabies of the Utopians.--KRONPRINZ WILHELM, D.I.W., Chapter I.

295. A long peace not only leads to enervation, but allows of the existence of a mult.i.tude of pitiful, trembling miserable-creatures [_Notexistenzen_] ... who cling fast to life with loud cries about their "right" to exist, block the way for real strength, make the air foetid, and altogether defile the blood of the nation. War brings real strength into honour again.--J. BURCKHARDT, W.B., p. 164.

296. Let us laugh with all our lungs at the old women in trousers who are afraid of war, and therefore complain that it is cruel and hideous. No, war is beautiful. Its august grandeur elevates the heart of man high above all that is commonplace and earthly.--O. V.

GOTTBERG, in _Weekly Paper for the Youth of Germany_, 25th January, 1913. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 2.

297. Efforts to secure peace are extraordinarily detrimental to the national health so soon as they influence politics.--GENERAL V.

BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 28.

298. People are too much given to sentimental maunderings. To what practical end had the vaunted Hague Peace Meetings led? The 100,000 marks spent on the Peace Palace would much better have been devoted to the support of needy veterans.--GENERAL KEIM, at meeting of the German Defence League, Ca.s.sel, February, 1913. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 82.

299. The worst of hypocrisies is the partic.i.p.ation by Germany in the Hague Conference.... We should do better to leave that farce to those who, for centuries, have made of hypocrisy an industry and a habit.--PROF. E. Ha.s.sE, Z.D.V., p. 132.

300. We can, fortunately, a.s.sert the impossibility of these efforts after peace ever attaining their ultimate object in a world bristling with arms, where a healthy egoism still directs the policy of most countries.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 36.

301. The so-called world-peace is not order, but chaos. It means in the first place the forcible dominion of capitalists and the proletariat [!] over the productive powers of the nations, and lastly, in the struggle of all against all, a return to those prehistoric conditions out of which, in the opinion of our "cosmopolitans," all our culture took its rise.--_Der Reichsbote_, 14th March, 1913.

NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 26.

302. A people of parasites like the Jews strives, with all the instincts of its craving for power and for wealth, towards the abolition of war, for if that could be effected its work of disintegrating the living bodies of the nations could go on unhindered.--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 158 (1893).

303. As for the whinings of M. de Bloch and Frau v. Suttner with regard to the horrors of modern war, they are imbecilities to which we can make a statistical answer. Statistics prove that two years of peace cost Germany more violent deaths (suicides, accidents, murders) than the whole war of 1870-71 cost us--that war without parallel.[29]--D.B.B., p. 206.

304. Sentimental maunderings about humanity and peace were bringing us face to face with the danger that cosmopolitanism might overshadow Germanism, and that the n.o.bel Prize might actually be offered to our Kaiser.--EXCELLENZ v. WROCHEM, at meeting of Pan-German League, Augsburg, September, 1912. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 72.

_See also Nos. 217, 244, 253, 314, 316, 317, 319._

=Militarism Exultant.=

(AFTER JULY, 1914.)

305. I have lived for forty-five years mainly in the society of Germans, and thirty years exclusively in German countries ... and my testimony is this: _in the whole of Germany there has not been for the past forty-three years a single man who has wished for war--not one_.

Whoever denies this, lies.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 11.

305a. It is only in war that we find the action of true heroism, the realization of which on earth is the care of militarism. That is why war appears to us, who are filled with militarism, as in itself a holy thing, as the holiest thing on earth.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p.

88.

306. Every age requires its war, lest civilization stagnate.--O.A.H.

SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 116.

307.

Bestir you, my comrades! To horse, to horse!

And away to the field and to freedom....[30]

Truly a splendid song. It thrills through all our muscles, and makes us feel as though we ourselves would like once more to take our share in a joyous fight.--PROF. U. v. WILAMOWITZ-MoLLENDORF, pt. I., p. 4.

_Compare No. 241._

308. Anti-militarism was enraptured. What we had laboriously built up through the cultivation of the warlike spirit sank to ruins.... G.o.d be eternally praised! The great ma.s.ses of the people would have nothing to say to these doctrines of the evil of war.... It appeared as clear as daylight that we had always been right, and that the warlike spirit, that deepest and purest joy of the great heart of our people, was unshaken and unchanged. The warlike spirit, the love of war and the craving for battle, was no imaginary characteristic of our people--no, and a thousand times no!--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 7.

309. The tempest of patriotic exaltation is sweeping through the German land, and Treitschke's solemn p.r.o.nouncement as to war being a fountain of health for the people has all of a sudden risen into renewed estimation. The war has swept the tedious patience-game of the diplomats off the table and set the brazen dice of the battlefield rolling in its stead.--F. v. LISZT, E.M.S., "Geleitwort," p. 1.

310. Our long years of peace, full of honest, but, alas! also of dishonest, work, had brought us no blessing. We breathed again when the war came.--H. v. WOLZOGEN, G.Z.K., p. 61.

311. Over the blood of the fallen glows the flame of poetic enthusiasm. A war without dead and wounded is a life without work, without aim and without hope.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 7.

_Compare Nos. 250, 254._

312. When the summons to war rang out, in thousands and thousands of families people searched the Holy Scriptures, to know what was G.o.d's message for the event of war; and the dear Bible-Book, which never leaves us in the lurch, brought to the searcher strength, counsel and consolation. The Old Testament, under-valued by many, now became, all of a sudden, the book for everyday reading.--PASTOR M. HENNIG, D.K.U.W., p. 5.