Gems (?) of German Thought

WORS

st of

re th

ng cry of a comrade tearing along beside me: "Donnerwetter, if this were only th

of his belief in courage as the highest flower of the human spirit, in his book "Deutschland in Waffen," sound like an

f the universe, present in all nature; not for nothing do the Indians worship Siva the Destroyer; the warrior is filled with the enthusiasm of destruction; wars purify the atmosphere like thunderstorms....[26] We may

fe enough without shedding a drop of blood. To this one may reply that the noblest weapon rusts if its use is too long restricted to reviews and parades ... and that every asc

nd Re

est three distiches of the Old Testament, the Song of Lamech, is a s

illah hea

mech hearken u

ain a man for

g man for

ll be aveng

h seventy a

saulx, P.

s part of the eternal order instituted by God.... Without war humanity would si

e Bible distinctly say that the ruler shall rule by the sword, and, again, that greater love

r God above us will see to it that war shall always recur, as a drast

country to another, since its application to politics would lead to a conflict of duties.... Christ himself said: "I am not come to send peace on earth, but a sword." His teaching c

e-corporal will call the guard to the door, and "old Fritz," springing from his golden throne, will give the

and the old K

nd Et

the mother of all good things" (Empedocles).... And there is nothing more moral than the

nest to the marrow of its bones, is ashamed of nothing in Nature.

nt.... A people really learns to know its full national strength only in war ... only

unsound. War is the source of all good growth. Without war th

falsehood and cowardice of enervation, the old heroic virtues are restored ... fear of God, martial bravery, obedience, up-rightnes

Nos. 2

ore the idealism of the main result.... Strength, truth and honour come to

expressed longing for war often degenerates into vain boasting and ludicrous sabre-rattling. But still and deep in the German heart must the j

ll such rubbish. It says with Moltke: "Eternal peace is only a dream, and not even a beautiful dream!" No, certainly not beautiful, for a peace which could no longer look f

ronting him, will have found new strength and exaltation in the thought that here the whole tragic gravity of mili

end of history, and therein lies the sacrednes

lso N

nd Bi

e rejoice in all men who, like ourselves, love danger, war and adventure ... we count ourselves among the conquerors; we ponder over the need of a new order o

recognize the necessity of war. We must accept war, which will last as long as

clitus. It will be the father of the new German r

gmatized as unworthy of the human race.... The weak nation is to have the same right to live as the powerful and vigorous natio

standpoint, the best and noblest form of the struggle for existence, but also, from time to time, an absolute necessity for the mainten

with.... "War is the father of all things." The sages of antiquity, long before Darwin, recognized this.... "To supplant or to b

lso N

nd Ku

camp, the deep impersonal hatred, the cold-bloodedness of murder with a good conscience, the general ardour of the system in the destruction of the enemy ... can be as forcibly an

.. Although the author thus recognizes war as an element in the divine world-order, he by no means ignores the blessings of peace, as the second factor in true, genuine Kultur, in a

.. Thus every achievement of "Kultur"[27] and of the human intelligence is only a means to more barbarous processes of war:

man people.... I must try to prove that war is not merely a necessary element in the life of nations, but an indispensable factor of

anish before the light of morning, then we Germans in particular must no longer see in war our destroyer ... bu

ed a degree of Kultur which it never could have reached by the met

of preparation for war is more than a means,

o Nos.

and

will bring the struggle for the dominion of the world-the com

d warlike age is commencing, which will, above all, bring

' ink and parliamentary resolutions, but marked by blood, wounds and deeds of arms. States could be maintained only by

its military power. Without war no State could be.... War, therefore will endure to the end

on the grandest scale (as regards means, talents and discipline) to which all coming millenniums will look back with envy and awe as a work of perfection-for the national movement out of which this martial glory springs, is only the counter-cho

ltke, Bismarck, the hard men of blood. It is to them, who offered up thousands of lives, that the soul of the people goes out with tenderest affection, with positively adoring gratitude. Because they did wha

he Will to Power.... The history of the world teaches us that only those people have strongly asserted themselves who have without hesitation placed the W

the heart of this people can always be won for great and noble aims, even though such aims can only be attended by danger.... An intense longing for a foremost place among the Powers and for manly action fills our nat

wer forcing itself upon us, against which all written treaties, all peace conferences and humanitarian agitations, come

ssary to

], let us not hesitate to apply it, so be it! God is the Judge. I accept the awful

e present sickness, must yearn for war as the awakener of all that i

people ... cannot be fulfilled without drawing

ust fix our minds incessantly upon war; may the first ten or twenty years of

t between France and Germany can be negotiated before the question between t

free hand in our international policy.... France must be so completely crushed th

ould trouble to follow. We must always keep the possibility of war with England before our eyes

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 mainta

ation and our civilization both entitle and compel us to adopt, we must not hold back in

aval power, international trade-was denied to our nation until quite recently. What we now wish to attain must be

s a rule, be obtained at the cost of its possessors-that is to say, by conque

ation and enlisting its interest in great universal ideas and great national ambitions.... We Germans have a far greater and more urgent duty toward

not be

war? I say unto you, it is the good war which hallow

y seem to be forced upon a statesman by the condition of home affairs, or by th

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 s

have been deliberately provoked by far-seeing statesmen have

lso N

pt for

wars-and the short peace more than the lo

rds, "Eternal peace for all peoples." For peoples who live and strive

the most part hostile to the idea underlying the Manifesto, and such a man as Mommsen could even, amid great app

e future of our home ... must not let himself be lazily sung to sleep by t

s [Notexistenzen] ... who cling fast to life with loud cries about their "right" to exist, block the way for real strength, make th

t is cruel and hideous. No, war is beautiful. Its august grandeur elevates the heart of man high above all that is com

rimental to the national health so soon as they infl

tings led? The 100,000 marks spent on the Peace Palace would much better have been devoted to the support of nee

erence.... We should do better to leave that farce to those who, for centuries,

attaining their ultimate object in a world bristling with arms, where a healthy ego

at [!] over the productive powers of the nations, and lastly, in the struggle of all against all, a return to those prehistoric conditions

r and for wealth, towards the abolition of war, for if that could be effected its work of disint

ities to which we can make a statistical answer. Statistics prove that two years of peace cost Germany more violent de

osmopolitanism might overshadow Germanism, and that the Nobel Prize might actually be offered to our Kaise

7, 244, 253, 314

rism E

July,

an countries ... and my testimony is this: in the whole of Germany there has not been for the past forty-thre

earth is the care of militarism. That is why war appears to us, who are filled with militaris

r, lest civilization stagnate.

0

comrades! To

e field and to

us feel as though we ourselves would like once more to take our sha

re No

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

fountain of health for the people has all of a sudden risen into renewed estimation. The war has swept the tedious patience-game of

so of dishonest, work, had brought us no blessing. We breat

enthusiasm. A war without dead and wounded is a life without

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ssage for the event of war; and the dear Bible-Book, which never leaves us in the lurch, brought to the searcher strength, counsel and conso

only because the majority of overfed ruminants would always keep the Lion encaged, but because only in war can th

ynastic leaders of our people, and from that day began the preaching of the blessings of everlasting peace. At the same time there began a

spirit] belong to that part of the German teaching profession which

Scriptures has brought him to such a sober way of thinking that he has steered clear of all Utopias, and has no

Peace" ... is the only inglorious exception. Such utterances would indeed amount to a sin against the holy spirit of Germanism, which, f

y of Beethoven and Goethe, but against the Germany of Bismarck, of which they have had too much.... But Faust and th

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 tha

r days, to tell their adherents that war is a misfortune, and that such utter

an humanity-without its military education. Non-German humanity give

affirm our constant readiness again to enter upon a war, as soon as our honour, our inward or outward growth, or the e

verywhere made a deep impression during the present war, and has opened the eyes of many. One has const

rs only-Generals and ex-officers of the General Staff-as German di

s a result of this war. Heaven defend Germa

s. 91, 192a

TNO

densing a paragraph from Ernst v. Lasaulx

ted in o

itten i

d 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

iller's Walle