Chapter 2
Some readers may be disposed to regret that the great Germanic trinity, Nietzsche-Treitschke-Bernhardi, contribute so largely to my anthology. In the first place, it may be said, we are tired of their names; in the second place, Germans deny that they have had anything like the influence we attribute to them. There is a certain validity in the first of these objections. The constant recurrence of these three names is certainly a little tedious. They are like a three-headed Charles I--or a triplicate Geibel. I would gladly have omitted them had it been by any means possible. But one might as well compile an Old Testament anthology and omit Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. For, whatever the Germans may say, they are the major prophets of the new-German spirit. Treitschke is the prophet of tribalism, Nietzsche of ruthlessness, Bernhardi of ambition. It is absurd to say that they are not influential. Treitschke may have fallen somewhat out of fashion in the years immediately preceding the war, but his spirit had permeated the political thought of a whole generation. To the living influence of Nietzsche there is a host of witnesses. Gerhart Hauptmann, near the beginning of the war, averred that the cultured German soldier carried "Zarathustra," along with "Faust" and the Bible, in his knapsack. Nor was this an idle guess. Professor Deissmann, of Berlin, tells us that he enquired into the matter, and learned from book-sellers that the books most in demand among soldiers were the New Testament, "Faust" and "Zarathustra." O.A.H. Schmitz, in "Das wirkliche Deutschland," says of the German youth born in the 'seventies and early 'eighties that Nietzsche was "the lighthouse toward which their enthusiasm was directed." Prof. Wilhelm Bousset, of Goettingen, writes: "There is among us much unripe, unclear Nietzsche enthusiasm: many a German ass has thrown the lion's skin of the great man round his shoulders, and thinks he has thereby become a philosopher and prophet." Such testimonies could be multiplied indefinitely. There is no question that Nietzsche has been by far the greatest single force among the spiritual shapers of new-Germany. It may be true that he did not intend his "immoralism" to be read literally as a guide to conduct--it may be true that, in some of his most characteristic passages, he knew himself to be talking reckless and dangerous nonsense (that was his way of "living dangerously")--but can we reasonably suppose that soldiers in a "conquered" country, soldiers full of the belief that any opposition to Germanism was in itself a crime (see No. 344), paused to look beneath his surface eulogies of murder and lust for some esoteric meaning that may possibly underlie them? Can it be a mere coincidence that, in the first war which Germany has waged since Nietzsche entered upon his apostolate of ruthlessness, the German armies should have been animated, to all appearance, by a literal interpretation of his "beast of prey" ideal?
As for Bernhardi, whom some German writers profess never to have heard of until we began to talk about him in England, one can only say that he is an ex-member of the Great General Staff, and is probably a pretty faithful interpreter of the ideas prevalent in that not un-influential organization. Moreover, his "Germany and the Next War," which appeared in the spring of 1912, ran through five editions at 6 marks before that year was out, and was then republished in a cheap and somewhat condensed popular edition under the title of "Our Future." Reviewing this edition, _Die Post_ says that, in its original form, the book "was received with the most serious attention in political and especially in military circles," and adds that this cheaper reprint "_must_ now become a book for the people."
It is an error, however, to suppose that a writer's importance is to be measured solely by the influence he can be shown to have exerted. A book or pamphlet may have had little or no active influence, and may yet be a very illuminating symptom of the national frame of mind. Every book must be an effect before it can become a cause. That Treitschke, Nietzsche, and Bernhardi have been very efficient causes I see no reason to doubt; but at any rate they are immensely significant effects of the psychological conditions of which I am here gathering up some random evidences.
It was a more difficult question to decide whether the lucubrations of Herr Houston Stewart Chamberlain came within my scope. Yet I had little hesitation in including him. The fact that he is by birth an Englishman does not make him any the less a characteristic and recognized mouthpiece of the new-German spirit. It may be objected that he caricatures it, that he is more German than the Germans. That, in the first place, is impossible; in the second place, while we have many evidences that Germans, from the Kaiser downward, set a high value on Herr Chamberlain's writings, we hear little or nothing of any protest against them as misrepresentations of "Deutschtum." Shall I be suspected of a quaint perversity of national prejudice if I say that Herr Chamberlain's war pamphlets are distinctly better reading than the great majority of their kind? They are much more individual, much less stereotyped and monotonous. One finds in them an occasional idea that is not the common property of every man in the street. It is generally (not always) a more or less crazy idea, but one hails it as an oasis in the desert of blusterous commonplace.
The arrangement of my little jewel-heap was more difficult, if less laborious, than the ingathering. Many of my extracts, perhaps most, might with equal appropriateness have been ranged under any one of three or four rubrics. Thus my classification is at best rough and, to some extent, arbitrary. There is, however, a certain reason in the sequence of headings. The first section, "Deutschland ueber Alles," represents the "badge of all the tribe"--the characteristic which lies at the root of the whole mischief--Germany's colossal self-glorification, self-adoration. If there is anything like it in history, it is unknown to me. Other nations may have been as vain, but, not having the printing-press so readily at command, they gave their vanity less exuberant expression. Besides, they may have had a sense of humour. The manifestations of this foible (if a thing of such tragic consequences can be called by such a name) fall under certain sub-headings. It was clear, for instance, that the vauntings of German Kultur must have a compartment to themselves--likewise the assertions of a special relation to God, the claims to the status of a Chosen People, and the comparisons, direct and indirect, between Germany and Christ. Having established, by means of a cloud of witnesses, the ruling passion of the national mind, I present in the following section proofs of the "Ambitions" in which this megalomania finds its natural utterance. In the sections, "War-Worship," "Ruthlessness" and "Machiavelism," are grouped evidences of the methods of force and fraud by which it was hoped that these ambitions were to be realized. Then, in a final section, I have assembled evidences of the inevitable corollary to morbid self-adoration--the boundless and almost equally unprecedented contempt and loathing for all adversaries, but especially for England.
The great majority of my quotations are taken direct from the original sources, the references being exactly given. I was scrupulous on this point, not only that the reader might be able to test the accuracy and fairness[7] of my work, but because I hoped that some one, some day, might be moved to republish the anthology in the original German. One cannot but think that, when the war-frenzy is over, a brief retrospect of its extravagances may be salutary for the German spirit. In a certain number of cases, however, I have not been able to give exact references, because the originals have not been accessible to me. This applies to my selections from three previous volumes of selections: Nippold's "Der Deutsche Chauvinismus," Andler's "Collection de documents sur le Pangermanisme," and Bang's "Hurrah and Halleluiah." Andler's excellent and scholarly method has, however, enabled me to "place" quotations from his collection to within a page or two. Thus, if some very Pan-German utterance does not occur on the precise page I have indicated, it will certainly be found on the preceding or on the following page.
Italics in my text always represent italics, or, rather, spaced type, in the original; but Germans are very lavish in their use of spaced type, and I have not always thought it necessary to reproduce this peculiarity. Points of exclamation, unless enclosed in square brackets, are the author's, not mine. I have almost always resisted the temptation to employ typographical devices to enhance the lustre of individual gems. In the Index of Authors I have added to many names a brief note which will enable the reader to estimate the position of the different writers in the public life of Germany.
In bringing together my material, I have found valuable help in many quarters. I should like especially to acknowledge my deep obligation to Mr. Alexander Gray for manifold aid and suggestion.
W.A.
_6th December, 1916._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] On the other hand, the almost equally remarkable warning to recruits that they must be ready to shoot down their nearest and dearest at the All-Highest command, is undoubtedly authentic.
[2] In a pamphlet by Professor A. Lasson, entitled _Deutsche Art und deutsche Bildung_, the adjective "deutsch" occurs 256 times in 42 pages--sometimes 13 times in one page, often 10 or 11 times--and always, of course, with a sort of unctuous implication that human language contains no higher term of eulogy. This enumeration does not include the constantly recurring "deutsch" in "Deutschland," nor the frequently repeated "germanisch" and "teutonisch."
[3] It may, of course, be possible to find many passages in which English writers say that, as a matter of history, God, or Heaven, or Providence, has given the British race great possessions throughout the world--a fact which the Germans are the first to admit and resent. But this is totally different from claiming a Divine mission to rule, or to civilize, or to "heal" the world.
[4] "Das Deutsche Volk in schwerer Zeit," by R.H. Bartsch, p. 118.
[5] Thou must mount and win, thou must triumph in victory or else sink into subjection--thou must be either anvil or hammer.
[6] Since then 'tis the joyous German right with the hammer to win land. We are of the race of the Hammer-God, and mean to inherit his world-empire. [This poem appeared in 1878, was reprinted by the author in 1900, in a selection from his own works, and is quoted in "Deutsche Geschichte in Liedern," Vol I., p. 10. The last two lines form the motto of Otto Richard Tannenberg's _Gross-Deutschland: die Arbeit des 20 Jahrhunerts_.]
[7] It will be found by any one who puts the matter to the test that in no case is there any unfairness in taking these brief extracts out of their context. The context is almost always an aggravating rather than an extenuating circumstance.
I
"DEUTSCHLAND UeBER ALLES"
I
"DEUTSCHLAND UeBER ALLES"
=German Humility.=
(BEFORE THE WAR.)
1. No people ever attains to national consciousness without over-rating itself. The Germans are always in danger of enervating their nationality through possessing too little of this rugged pride.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p. 19.
_For further testimonies to German humility see Nos. 17, 20, 23, 36, 51, 106, 122, 206, 206b, 394._
2. The German people must rise as a master-folk above the inferior peoples of Europe and the primitive peoples of the colonies.--G.U.M., p. 8.
2a. The German people is always right, because it is the German people, and numbers 87 million souls.--O.R. TANNENBERG, G.D., p. 231.
3. The French, under Napoleon, wanted to sacrifice the whole world to their insatiable thirst for glory, and the English treat every barrier opposed to their hunger for exploitation as a challenge to their superiority. Great is the gulf that separates these cupidities from the hitherto unrivalled moral elevation of the sense of honour in the German people.--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 220 (1901).
_Compare Section V., "Machiavelism."_
4. My soul is heavy when I see the many enemies surrounding Germany.... And my thoughts fly forward into the far future, and ask, "Will there ever be a time when there is no more Germany?" ... How poor and empty would the rich world then become! Then all men would ask themselves, "How comes it that the peoples no longer understand each other? Whither has that great, serene power departed, that brought near the souls of the peoples, each to each? Who has shattered the marvellous mirror from which the countenance of the world was thoughtfully reflected?" Then they would strike their heads and their breasts in despair, crying: "We have criminally robbed ourselves of our wealth! The world, the great, rich world, has grown waste, poor, and empty: the world has no longer a soul, she has no longer a Germany!"--E. v. WILDENBRUCH (1889), quoted in D.R.S.Z., No. 12.
5. The proud conviction forces itself upon us with irresistible power that a high, if not the highest, importance for the entire development of the human race is ascribable to this German people.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 72.
6. The German is a hero born, and believes that he can hack and hew his way through life.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p. 230.
7. We are still child-like in our inmost feelings, innocent in our pleasures, simple in our inclinations, in spite of individual aberrations; we are still prolific, and our race multiplies, so that our own soil has long been insufficient to support us all. It is therefore doubly imperative for us to remain heroes, for who knows whether the Germanic migrations are destined to remain isolated phenomena in history! The peoples around us are either overripe fruits which the next storm may bring to the ground, such as the Turks, Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese, and a great part of the Slavs; or they are, indeed, proud of their race, but senile and artificial in their Kultur, slow in their increase and boundless in their ambition, like the French; or, confident in the unassailability of their country, like the English and the Americans, they have forgotten justice and made their selfishness the measure of all things. Who knows whether we Germans are not the rod predestined for the chastening of these degeneracies, who knows whether we may not again, like our fathers in dim antiquity, have to gird on our swords and go forth to seek dwelling-places for our increase?--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 159 (1893).
8. We are distinguished from other nations by our honourable love for outspoken convictions, which would make a cut-and-dried party system distasteful to us.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p. 148.
9. The surest means of serving the ends of humanity is to work at the elaboration of our national personality, and to develop the full strength of its crystalline radiance.--F. BLEY, W.D.D., p. 23.
10. We have forced ourselves, though the last-comers, the virtual upstarts, between the States which have earlier gained their place, and now claim our share in the dominion of the world, after we have for centuries been paramount only in the realm of the intellect.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 13.
11. Why must teachers and schoolboys, year out, year in, worry about the old Greeks and Romans? To foster idealism in the young, we are told! But for that there is no need to go to Rome and Athens. Our German history offers us ideals enough, and is richer in deeds of heroism than Rome and Athens put together.--GENERAL KEIM, at meeting of the German Defence League, Cassel, Feb., 1913; NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 82.
12. History teaches us that supreme treasure of humanity, German idealism, can be preserved only in the stout bark of national development.--F. BLEY, W.D.D., p. 23.
_On Idealism, see also Nos. 45, 276, 442, 464._
13. A war fought and lost would destroy our laboriously gained political importance ... would shake the influence of German thought in the civilized world, and thus check the general progress of mankind in its healthy development, for which a flourishing Germany is the essential condition. Our next war will be fought for the highest interests of our country and of mankind. This will invest it with importance in the world's history. "World-power or downfall!" will be our rallying-cry.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 154.
14. In our German people, peaceful dispositions and war-like prowess are so happily mixed that in this respect no other people on the earth can rival us, and none seems so clearly predestined to light humanity on the way to true progress.--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 158 (1893).
15. The Latin has no feeling for the beauty of a forest; when he takes his repose in it he lies upon his stomach, while we rest upon our backs.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p. 206.
(AFTER JULY, 1914.)
16. If we compare our time with the great eras of our fathers, we are perfectly capable of a sober self-criticism. We have no use for illusions and self-deceptions on the way to our indispensable victory.--PROF. F. MEINECKE, D.D.E., p. 10.
17. Where in the whole world can a people be found who have such cause for manly pride as we? But we are equally far removed from presumption and from arrogance.--"War Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in H.A.H., p. 117.
18. As the German bird, the eagle, hovers high over all the creatures of the earth, so also should the German feel that he is raised high above all other nations who surround him, and whom he sees in the limitless depth beneath him.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 143.
19. Germany is our existence, our faith, the meaning and depth of the world.--"On the German God," by PASTOR W. LEHMANN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 84.
20. It is not only our enemies who, by their underground intrigues, have sought to divert from us the sympathies of other peoples. If we would speak frankly, we must admit that we ourselves are partly to blame in the matter. A great part of the blame is due to our insufficient self-esteem and self-valuation--an inveterate German failing.--PROF. DR. R. JANNASCH, W.D.U.S., p. 22.
21. Germany is the future of humanity.--"On the German God," by PASTOR W. LEHMANN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 78.
21a. God defend the noble cause of Deutschtum. There is no other hope for the future of humanity.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, in _Hamburger Nachrichten_, September, 1914.
21b. We must vanquish, because the downfall of Germanism would mean the downfall of humanity.--"Six War Sermons," by PASTOR K. KOeNIG, quoted in H.A.H., p. 99.
22. When the German stands leaning on his mighty sword, clad in steel from top to toe, whosoever will may, down below, dance round his feet--they may rail at him and throw mud at him, as the "intellectuals" ... of England, France, Russia and Italy are now doing--in his lofty repose he will not allow himself to be disturbed, and will only reflect as did his ancestors. _Oderint dum metuant._--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 131.
23. We will not conceal from ourselves that these victories for which our bells ring and our flags wave, and for which we thank our God, may become a danger to us, should they make us vain and arrogant, boastful and indolent! God forbid! We will hold fast to our old modesty, with which we have so often been reproached, and which has indeed often enough degenerated into the undervaluing of ourselves and overvaluing of that which is foreign and despicable.--K. ENGELBRECHT, D.D.D.K., p. 53.
24. We must develop, not into "Europeans,'" but into ever higher Germans.... What sort of a European would be formed by a mixture of the heroic German with the calculating Englishman? If the result was a man who thought half calculatingly and half heroically, it would be an exaltation for the Englishman, but a degradation for the German.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 125.
25. If we come victorious out of this war, we shall be the first people on the earth, a rich stream of gold will pour over our land, and this greatness, these riches, may be a blessing to us if we always remember that true greatness, true riches, lie only in the possession of _moral_ advantages, and that to the fact of our possessing such advantages we owe our success.--W. HELM, W.W.S.M., p. 33.
26. Do you not see, Albion, that the German Michel,[8] on whom you looked down with such contempt, is now transformed into the Archangel Michael, and, encountering you with his flaming sword, triumphs over the race of the fallen angels and all the offspring of hell.--F. DELITZSCH, D.R.S.Z., No. 13, p. 21.
27. We must win, because, if we were defeated, no one in the _whole world_ could any longer cherish any remnant of belief in truth and right, in the Good, or, indeed, in any higher Power which wisely and justly guides the destinies of humanity.--W. HELM, W.W.S.M., p. 8.
28. Every great artistic achievement of France and Italy since the time of the Romans can be traced to families and classes with a strong mixture of German blood, and, especially in earlier times, to the descendants of Germanic stocks, who had kept their blood, or at any rate their nature (_Art_) pure.--H.A. SCHMID, D.R.S.Z., No. 25, p. 21.
29. Germany is precisely--who would venture to deny it--the representative of the highest morality, of the purest humanity, of the most chastened Christianity. He, therefore, who fights for its maintenance, its victory, fights for the highest blessings of humanity itself, and for human progress. Its defeat, its decline, would mean a falling back to the worst barbarism.--"War Sermons," by PASTOR H. FRANCKE, quoted in H.A.H., p. 68.
30. No nation in the world can give us anything worth mentioning in the field of science or technology, art or literature, which we would have any trouble in doing without. Let us reflect on the inexhaustible wealth of the German character, which contains in itself everything of real value that the Kultur of man can produce.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 135.
31. We have in Germany the best Press in the world, and are in that respect superior to all other countries.--PROF. A.V. HARNACK, W.W.S.G., p. 19.
32. Germany's fight against the whole world is in reality the battle of the spirit against the whole world's infamy, falsehood, and devilish cunning.--"On the German God," by PASTOR W. LEHMANN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 81.
33. German patriotism strikes its deep roots into the fruitful soil of a heroic view of the world, and around its crown there gleam the rays of the highest spiritual and artistic culture.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 71.
34. This combination of clearness of purpose and heroic spirit of sacrifice was unknown in world-history before August, 1914. Not till then was the new German human being born.... Is this new creation to be the human being of the future?--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 103.
35. Verily it has long been an honour and a joy, a source of renown and of happiness, to be a German--the year 1914 has made it a title of nobility.--"War Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in H.A.H., p. 133.
36. When Luther, in the domain of religion, characterized as unevangelical the conception of merit and reward, and energetically banished the huckster-spirit from religious feeling, he opened to the German thought the widest possibilities of victory.... A specially Germanic way of feeling, a Germanic modesty and distinction of thought, was here powerfully promoted by means of the Gospel. True distinction is always modest, in the sense of being unobtrusive and not bragging of deserts!--K. ENGELBRECHT, D.D.D.K., p. 56.