Chapter 7

282. In one way or another _we must square our account with France_ if we wish for a free hand in our international policy.... France must be so completely crushed that she can never again come across our path.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 105.

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 entitle 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 masses, 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 Japanese, 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 circumstances 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 circumstances 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 multitude 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, Cassel, February, 1913. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 82.

299. The worst of hypocrisies is the participation 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. HASSE, Z.D.V., p. 132.

300. We can, fortunately, assert 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 Nobel 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-MOeLLENDORF, 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.... God be eternally praised! The great masses 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 pronouncement 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 God'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.

313. The order in which the nations take rank cannot be determined in time of peace, by standards of reason, not only because the majority of overfed ruminants would always keep the Lion encaged, but because only in war can the Lion prove his lionlikeness to others, and--what is still more important--to himself.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 3.

314. [Materialism and millionairism were playing havoc in Germany.] At last the spectre of materialism penetrated into the palaces of the dynastic leaders of our people, and from that day began the preaching of the blessings of everlasting peace. At the same time there began a hateful campaign of slander against all true patriots, against all ethical champions of war (_Ethiker des Krieges_.)--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 6.

315. The laurels of this bloodless victory [the victory of the war spirit] belong to that part of the German teaching profession which has remained true to its patriotic duties!--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 8.

316. Though clever writers sometimes speak of the Kaiser's romantic proclivities, his earnest searching of the Scriptures has brought him to such a sober way of thinking that he has steered clear of all Utopias, and has not allowed himself to be led astray by the empty dreams of pacifist enthusiasm.--PASTOR M. HENNIG, D.K.U.W., p. 16.

317. We have no knowledge of pacifist utterances of representative Germans of any time. The wretched book of the aged Kant, on "Perpetual Peace" ... is the only inglorious exception. Such utterances would indeed amount to a sin against the holy spirit of Germanism, which, from the depths of its heroism, cannot possibly arrive at any view other than a high appreciation of war.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 93.

318. One or other of the English swashbucklers has recently said that the Allies are not fighting against the Germany of Beethoven and Goethe, but against the Germany of Bismarck, of which they have had too much.... But Faust and the Ninth Symphony strongly resemble the mighty works of the great artsmith, Bismarck.--K. ENGELBRECHT, D.D.D.K., p. 61.

319. How far our classic age ... was removed from a depreciation and rejection of war is shown by the attitude assumed by a spirit so pathetically calm and aloof as Jean Paul, who nevertheless called war the strengthening iron cure of humanity, and maintained, indeed, that this held good more for the side which suffers than for that which wins. The fever caused by the wounds of war was, in his opinion, better than the jail fever of a loathsome peace.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 94.

320. It is monstrous that even high spiritual dignitaries can be found, in our days, to tell their adherents that war is a misfortune, and that such utterances can actually be printed by the official press.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 7.

321. Just imagine our humanity of to-day--I mean, of course, our German humanity--without its military education. Non-German humanity gives us some idea of what that would mean!--H. v. WOLZOGEN, G.Z.K., p. 60.

322. If we are to carry on the warlike education of our people--and we are resolved to do so--then we by that very fact affirm our constant readiness again to enter upon a war, as soon as our honour, our inward or outward growth, or the expansive tendencies rooted in the inmost nature of our people, demand it.--PASTOR D. BAUMGARTEN, D.R.S.Z., No. 24, p. 17.

323. The incomparably greater efficiency of army administration, even in questions of civil life, has everywhere made a deep impression during the present war, and has opened the eyes of many. One has constantly heard people exclaim: "Oh, it could only continue after the war!"--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, P.I., p. 116.

324. Oh, that Germany would learn from this war to send out soldiers only--Generals and ex-officers of the General Staff--as German diplomatists, ambassadors and consuls!--K.L.A. SCHMIDT, D.E.E., p. 17.

325. We must not look for permanent peace as a result of this war. Heaven defend Germany from that.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 19.

_See also Nos. 91, 192a, 195, 217._

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Down to this point Burckhardt is condensing a paragraph from Ernst v. Lasaulx, "Philosophie der Geschichte," 1856 p. 85.

[27] Quoted in original.

[28] Written in 1885.

[29] Klaus Wagner (_Krieg_, p. 223) has a long statistical argument to the same effect. He says that 41,000 men lost their lives in 1870-71, and estimates on this basis that, in a repetition of that war, the Germany of his own time (1906) would lose only one man in every 1,600 of her population. The confident assumption that the next war could be nothing but 1870 over again underlies all German speculation on the subject.

[30] From Schiller's _Wallensteins Lager_.

IV

RUTHLESSNESS

IV

RUTHLESSNESS

(BEFORE THE WAR.)

326. War is an act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.... Insignificant limitations, hardly worthy of mention, which it imposes on itself, under the name of the law of nations, accompany this violence without notably enfeebling it.--GENERAL C v. CLAUSEWITZ, V.K., Vol. i., p. 4.

327. I warn you against pity: from it will one day arise a heavy cloud for men. Verily, I am weatherwise!--FR. NIETZSCHE, Z. _Of the Pitiful._

328. The Germans let the primitive Prussian tribes decide whether they should be put to the sword or thoroughly Germanized. Cruel as these processes of transformation may be, they are a blessing for humanity. It makes for health that the nobler race should absorb the inferior stock.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i, p. 121.

329. Much that is dreadful and inhuman in history, much that one hardly likes to believe, is mitigated by the reflection that the one who commands and the one who carries out are different persons--the former does not behold the sight, therefore does not experience the strong impression on the imagination; the latter obeys a superior and therefore feels no responsibility.--FR. NIETZSCHE, H.T.H., section 101.

330. The warrior has need of passion. It must not ... be regarded as a necessary evil; nor condemned as a regrettable consequence of physical contact; nor must we seek to restrain it and curb it as a savage and brutal force.--GENERAL v. HARTMANN, D.R., Vol. XIII., p. 122.

331. One must ... resist all sentimental weakness: life is _in its essence_ appropriation, injury, the overpowering of whatever is foreign to us and weaker than ourselves, suppression, hardness, the forcing upon others of our own forms, the incorporation of others, or, at the very least and mildest, their exploitation.--FR. NIETZSCHE, B.G.E., section 259.

332. We may depend upon the re-Germanizing of Alsace, but not of Livonia and Kurland. There no other course is open to us but to keep the subject race in as uncivilized a condition as possible, and thus prevent them from becoming a danger to their handful of conquerors.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i, p. 122.

333. A morality of the ruling class [has for] its principle that one has duties only to one's equals; that one may act towards beings of a lower rank, towards all that is foreign, just as seems good to one ... and in any case "beyond good and evil."--FR. NIETZSCHE, B.G.E., section 260.

334. The "argument of war" permits every belligerent State to have recourse to all means which enable it to attain the object of the war; still, practice has taught the advisability of allowing in one's own interest the introduction of a limitation in the use of certain methods of war, and a total renunciation of the use of others.... If in the following work the expression "the law of war" is used, it must be understood that by it is meant only ... a limitation of arbitrary behaviour which custom and conventionality, human friendliness and a calculating egoism have erected, but for the observance of which there exists no express sanction, but only "the fear of reprisals" decides.--G.W.B., pp. 52, 53.

335. A new type of philosophers and commanders will some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that has existed in the way of occult, terrible and benevolent [!] beings might look pale and dwarfed. The image of such leaders hovers before our eyes.... The conditions which one would have partly to create and partly to utilize for their genesis [include] a transvaluation of values, under the new pressure and hammer of which a conscience should be steeled and a heart transformed to brass, so as to bear the weight of such responsibility.--FR. NIETZSCHE, B.G.E., section 203.

336. Since the tendency of thought of the last century was dominated essentially by humanitarian considerations which not infrequently degenerated into sentimentality and weak emotionalism, there have not been wanting attempts to influence the development of the usages of war in a way which was in fundamental contradiction with the nature of war and its object. Attempts of this kind will also not be wanting in the future, the more so as these agitations have found a kind of moral recognition in some provisions of the Geneva Convention and the Brussels and Hague Conferences.... The danger can only be met by a thorough study of war itself. By steeping himself in military history an officer will be able to guard himself against excessive humanitarian notions, it will teach him that certain severities are indispensable to war, nay, more, that the only true humanity very often lies in a ruthless application of them.--G.W.B., pp. 54, 55.

337. Those very men who are so strictly kept within bounds by good manners ... who, in their behaviour to one another, show themselves so inventive in consideration, self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride and friendship--those very men are to the outside world, to things foreign and to foreign countries, little better than so many uncaged beasts of prey. Here they enjoy liberty from all social restraint ... and become rejoicing monsters, who perhaps go on their way, after a hideous sequence of murder, conflagration, violation, torture, with as much gaiety and equanimity as if they had merely taken part in some student gambols.... Deep in the nature of all these noble races there lurks unmistakably the beast of prey, the _blond beast_, lustfully roving in search of booty and victory.--FR. NIETZSCHE, G.M., i., II.

338. However much it may ruffle human feeling to compel a man to do harm to his own Fatherland, and indirectly to fight his own troops, none the less no army operating in an enemy's country will altogether renounce this expedient.--G.W.B., p. 117.

339. A still more severe measure is the compulsion of the inhabitants to furnish information about their own army, its strategy, its resources, and its military secrets. The majority of writers of all nations are unanimous in their condemnation of this measure. Nevertheless it cannot be entirely dispensed with; doubtless it will be applied with regret, but the argument of war will frequently make it necessary.--G.W.B., p. 118.

340. That the lambs should bear a grudge against the great birds of prey is in no way surprising; but that is no reason why we should blame the great birds of prey for picking up the lambs.... To demand of strength that it should _not_ manifest itself as strength, that it should _not_ be a will for overcoming, for overthrowing, for mastery, a thirst for enemies, for struggles and triumphs, is as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should manifest itself as strength.--FR. NIETZSCHE, G.M., i., 13.

341. It is a gratuitous illusion to suppose that modern war does not demand far more brutality, far more violence, and an action far more general than was formerly the case.--GENERAL v. HARTMANN, D.R., Vol. xiv., p. 89.

342. The enemy State must not be spared the want and wretchedness of war; these are particularly useful in shattering its energy and subduing its will.--GENERAL v. HARTMANN, D.R., Vol. xiii., p. 459.

343. We ... believe that [man's] Will to Life had to be intensified into unconditional Will to Power; we hold that hardness, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, arts of temptation and devilry of all kinds; that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical, wild-beast-like and serpent-like in man contributes to the elevation of the species just as much as its opposite--and in saying this we do not even say enough.--FR. NIETZSCHE, B.G.E., section 44.

344. Even if there were no question of vengeance, even if we were not demanding reparation for ancient wrongs ... the crime (_Frevel_) of opposing the development of Germany is so great that the most trenchant measures are scarcely a sufficient punishment for it!--D.B.B., p. 214.

345. Whoever enters upon a war in future, will do well to look only to his own interests, and pay no heed to any so-called international law. He will do well to act without consideration and without scruple, and this holds good in the case of a war with England.[31]--D.B.B., p. 214.

346. Hatred, delight in mischief, rapacity and ambition, and whatever else is called evil, belong to the marvellous economy of the conservation of the race.--FR. NIETZSCHE, J.W., section 1.

347. Individual persons may be harshly dealt with when an example is made of them, intended to serve as a warning.... Whenever a national war breaks out, terrorism becomes a necessary military principle.--GENERAL v. HARTMANN, D.R., Vol. XIII, p. 462.