Selections from Treitschke's Lectures on politics

KmSUMMMBDNnOBaUflMH

jMr j^HMH^H

Vi

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES

r«

SELECTIONS FKOM TREITSCHKE'S
LECTURES ON POLITICS

\

SELECTIONS FROM

TREITSCHKE'S

LECTURES ON

POLITICS

TRANSLATED BY

ADAM L. GOWANS

LONDON AND GLASGOW

GOWANS & GRAY, LTD.

1914

First Edition, October, 1914-
Reprinted, October, 1914-

• • • » *

• •• .

... . • • • V-

3C

C">

OS

PREFACE

Heinrich von Treitschke was born in 1834 at
Dresden, the son of a Saxon general of Bohemian
origin. From 1858 to 1863 he lectured on history
at Leipzig; from 1863 to 1866 he was professor at
Freiburg. After a short period of activity at Kiel, he
was in Heidelberg till 1874, when he went to Berlin,
where he remained till his death in 1896.

The lectures on politics, from which the following
oc selections were made, were delivered at Berlin Uni-
versity. Their general tenor is apparent from the
"Zj extracts here given; their great popularity in Berlin
ce and their tremendous influence on German thought is
vividly described in " Germany and England," by the
late Professor Cramb. His description might fittingly
be supplemented by the illuminating passage which
concludes Professor Meyer's brilliant criticism of
Treitschke in his "Deutsche Literatur des Neunzehnten
Jahrhundert " : "But, for the very reason that his
passions did carry him away, he can never be accused
of dishonesty. He would have suffered martyrdom at
any moment for what he said. His listeners felt this.
When, after the first few minutes, they had grown
accustomed to the strangely vibrant ring of his voice,

)0

- 3
O

6 PREFACE

the curiously clipped elocution, with the deep breaths
of that broad chest, seemed to them almost the only
natural way of speaking — so greatly did it captivate
the hearer. Nor was it otherwise with his matter.
Treitschke was always convinced that no reasonable
and honourable man could think otherwise than him-
self, so much was he identified with his convictions ;
nor did his own changes of opinion embarrass him.
Wherever he marched, he took the field with all his
forces, armed, eager for the fray, ready to conquer or
to die ; and thus he set a splendid example in an age
full of pessimism, effeminacy and weariness. His
personality was a factor in Germany's development."
I might only add that I have thought it best, in
view of the great importance of so many of Trcitschke's
opinions, to follow the original as closely as possible,
and to prefer a somewhat bald literalness to a more
fluent English which would not express the exact
sense of the German. The translation is made from
the 1899-1900 edition.

A. L. G.

CONTENTS

BOOK I. THE NATURE OF THE STATE

PAQE

§ 1. The Conception of the State .... 9

§ 2. The Aim of the State 21

§ 3. The Relation of the State to the Moral Law 26

§ 4. The Rise and Fall of States 39

§ 5. Government and Governed 44

BOOK II. THE SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE

STATE

§ 6. Country and People 47

§ 7. The Family - - ... 56

§ 8. Races, Stocks, Nations 58

§ 9. Castes, Orders, Classes 61

§ 10. Religion - - - .... 66

§ 11. The Education of the People 67

§ 12. Domestic Economy 69

BOOK III. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE

§ 13. The Forms of the State 72

§ 14. The Theocracy 73

§ 15. The Monarchy 76

§ 16. The Older Forms of the Monarchy 83

§ 17. The Constitutional Monarchy - - - 86

§ 18. Tyranny and Cesarism 89

8 CONTENTS

PAGE

§ 19. The Aristocratic Keptjblic 90

§ 20. The Democratic Eepublic 92

§ 21. Confederacy of States and Federal State - 94

§ 22. The Empire 96

BOOK IV. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE

§ 23. The Organization of the Army - - - - • 99

§ 24. The Administration of the Law- - - 109

§ 25. The Finances of the State ... - 113

§26. Administration in the Narrower Sense - - 117

BOOK V. THE STATE IN INTERNATIONAL
INTERCOURSE

§ 27. History of the Company of States - - 120

§ 28. International Law and Intercourse - - 123

POLITICS
BOOK I. THE NATURE OF THE STATE

§ 1. The Conception of the State.

The State is the people legally united as an independent
power. By " people " we understand, briefly, a plural
number of families permanently living together. When
this is recognized, it follows, that the State dates from
the very beginning and is necessary, that it has existed
as long as history and is as essential to humanity as
language. . .

. . . The State is power for this reason only, that it
may maintain itself alongside of other equally indepen-
dent powers. War and the administration of justice are!
the first tasks of even the rudest barbaric State. But
these tasks are only conceivable in a plurality of States
permanently existing alongside of one another. Hence
the idea of a World-State is odious ; the ideal of one
State containing all mankind is no ideal at all. The

10 THE NATUKE OF THE STATE [bk. i

whole content of civilization cannot be realized in a
single State ; in no single people can the virtues of the
aristocracy and the democracy be found, combined. All
peoples, just like individual men, are one-sided, but in
the very fulness of this one-sidedness the richness of
the human race is seen. The rays of the divine light
only appear in individual nations infinitely broken;
each one exhibits a different picture and a different
conception of the divinity. Every people has therefore
the right to believe that certain powers of the divine
reason display themselves in it at their highest. With-
out overrating itself a people does not arrive at know-
ledge of itself at all. The Germans are always in
danger of losing their nationality, because they have
too little of this solid pride. | The average German has
very little political pride, but among us even Philistines
are wont to have the pride of culture in the freedom
and universality of the German spirit; and that is
fortunate, for such a feeling is necessary, in order
that a people may preserve and maintain itself.

. . . Yet how tragic is the fate of Spain, which dis-
covered the New World and has preserved for itself
to-day in a direct way nothing whatever of that great
achievement of civilization ! The Spanish have only
the one advantage still left, that so many millions of

§1] THE CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 11

Spanish-speaking people live across the sea. Other
nations have come to wrest from the Iberian nations
the fruits of their labour ; first Holland and then the
English. History wears thoroughly masculine features;
it is not for sentimental natures or for women. Only
brave nations have a secure existence, a future, a
development ; weak and cowardly nations go to the
wall, and rightly so. In this everlasting for and
against of different States lies the beauty of history ; to
wish to abolish this rivalry is simply unreason. Man-
kind has perceived this in all ages. The world-empire
of Alexander the Great was followed in natural reaction
by the founding of the empires of the Diadochi and the
Hellenized nations of the East. The huge one-sided-
ness of national thought in our century among most
peoples and little peoples is nothing more than the
natural reaction against the Napoleonic world-empire.
The unsuccessful attempt to transform the many-
sidedness of European life into the barren uniformity
of a world-empire has had the natural consequence,
that national thought makes itself so exclusively pro-
minent to-day ; world-citizenship has retired too far

\ into the background.

,\

If we consider further our definition : " The State is
the people legally united as an independent power," we

12 THE NATURE OF THE STATE [bk. i

may express it more shortly thus : " The State is the
public power of offence and defence." The State is in
the first instance power, that it may maintain itself ;
it is not the totality of the people itself, as Hegel
assumed in his deification of the State — the people is
not altogether amalgamated with it ; but the State
protects and embraces the life of the people, regulating
it externally in all directions. On principle it does
not ask how the people is disposed; it demands
obedience : its laws must be kept, whether willingly or
unwillingly. It is a step in advance when the silent
obedience of the citizens becomes an inward, rational
consent, but this consent is not absolutely necessary.
Kingdoms have lasted for centuries as powerful, highly-
developed States, without this inward consent of their
citizens. What the State needs, is in the first place what
is external ; it wills that it be obeyed, its nature is to
execute what it chooses. The terrible /3/a /3/a (3id^erai
permeates the whole history of States. • When the
State can no longer carry out what it wills, it perishes
in anarchy. What a contrast to the life of the
Church ! One may say : " Power is the principle of
the State, as Faith is the principle of the Church,
and Love of the family." The Church as an essentially
internal system, which also leads an external life, but
addresses itself in the first instance to the conscience,
places value above everything on the mind; and a

§ l] THE CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 13

Church stands the higher, the more inwardly and pro-
foundly she is able to conceive this her nature. There-
fore these words apply here : " He that eateth and
drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation
to himself." But, if the State chose to think thus, if it
chanced to ask of its soldiers something in addition to
the fulfilment of their military duties, that would be
intolerable. The State says : " It i3 quite indifferent
to me what you think about the matter, but you must
obey." That is the reason why tender natures under-
stand with such difficulty the life of the State : of
women one can say in general, that in a normal way
they only acquire comprehension of Law and State
through their husbands, just as the normal man has by
nature no inclination for the petty life of the house-
hold. One can understand that perfectly, for the
idea of power is of course a stern one ; to achieve
one's purpose fully and unconditionally is here the
highest and first thing. Therefore the peoples that
form real States are not so much the nations which
are gifted with genius as those whose strength lies in
their character. Here the history of the world dis-
closes a dreadful justice to the thoughtful inquirer.
The visionary may lament it, but the serious thinker
will recognize it to have been necessary that the
cultivated Athenians should have succumbed to the
Spartans, the Hellenes to the Romans ; and that in like

14 THE NATURE OF THE STATE [bk. i

manner highly-refined Florence could not sustain the
struggle with Venice. In everything there lies an
inherent necessity. The State is no Academy of Arts ;
if it neglects its power in favour of the ideal strivings
of mankind, it renounces its nature and goes to ruin.
The renunciation of its own power is for the State in
the most real sense the sin against the Holy Ghost ;
to attach itself closely to a foreign State out of senti-
mentalism, as we Germans have often done with the
English, is in fact a deadly sin.

. . . This truth remains : the essence of the State
consists in this, that it can suffer no higher power
above itself. How proud and truly worthy of a State
was Gustavus Adolphus's declaration when he said :
" I recognize no one above me but God and the sword
of the victor." That is so unreservedly true, that we
here again at once recognize that it cannot be the
future of the human race to form one single political
power, but that the ideal towards which we strive is an
ordered company of nations, which lays down limita-
tions of sovereignty in the way of voluntary treaties
without doing away with that sovereignty.

Again, the conception of sovereignty can be no rigid
one ; it is elastic and relative like all political concep-
tions. Every State will for its own sake in a certain

§ 1] THE CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 15

respect limit its sovereignty by treaties. If States
conclude treaties with one another, their completeness
as powers is to some extent restricted. But that does
not invalidate the rule, for every treaty is a voluntary
limitation of the individual power, and all international
treaties are written with the stipulation : rebus sic
stantibus. A State cannot possibly bind its will for the
future in respect to another State. The State has no
higher judge above it, and will therefore conclude all
its treaties with that silent reservation. This is
vouched for by the truth, that, so long as there has
been a law of nations, at the moment that war was
declared between the contending States all treaties
ceased ; but 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. Upon this
constant alteration of treaties the progress of history is
founded ; every State must see to it that its treaties
remain in vigour and do not go out of date, so that
another power doe3 not denounce them by declaring
war upon it. For treaties that have outlived them-
selves must be denounced, and new ones corresponding
to the new conditions must take their place.

From this it is clear that the international treaties
which restrict the will of a State are no absolute
barriers, but voluntary limitations of itself. From

16 THE NATURE OF THE STATE [bk. i

which certainly follows, that the erection of an inter-
national court of arbitration as a permanent institution
is incompatible with the nature of the State. Only in
questions of the second or third importance could it in
any case submit itself to such a court of arbitration.
For questions of vital importance there is no impartial
foreign power in existence. If we committed the
folly of treating the matter of Alsace as an open
question and entrusted it to an arbiter, who will
seriously believe that he could be impartial ? And it
is also a matter of honour for a State to determine
such a question itself. Thus there can be no final
international tribunal at all. Only, international
treaties may become more frequent. But to the end
of history arms will maintain their rights ; and in
that very point lies the sacredness of war.

If we apply the standard of self-government, it is to
be observed; how in the company of States of Europe
the larger States are gaining an ever more pronounced
predominance, just as our State system has assumed an
ever more aristocratic character. It is not yet so very
long since that States like Piedmont-Savoy could actually
turn the scale in a coalition by their adhesion or deser-
tion. No one will consider that possible nowadays.
Since the Seven Years' War the ascendency of the

§1] THE CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 17

Five Great Powers has developed itself, having proved
itself necessary. Great European questions are dis-
cussed in that circle only. Italy is nearly on the point
of entering it ; but neither Belgium nor Sweden nor
Switzerland may join in the discussion if they are not
themselves directly concerned.

The whole development of our company of States
aims unmistakably at ousting the States of the second
rank. And here there present themselves, if we take
the non-European world into consideration, prospects
infinitely serious for ourselves. At the partition of
the non-European world among the European powers,
Germany has so far always had the worst of it, and
yet the question whether we can also become an over-
sea power concerns our existence as a great State.
Otherwise there presents itself the ghastly prospect of
England and Kussia dividing the world between them ;
in which case one really does not know which would
be more immoral and more appalling, the Russian knout
or the English purse.

If we look closer, it is manifest that, if the State
is power, it is only the State that is really powerful
that corresponds to our idea. Hence the undoubted
ludicrousness that lies in the nature of a small State.
Weakness, it is true, is nothing intrinsically ludicrous,
but the weakness that tries to pose as power is indeed
so. In small States there is developed that beggarly

18 THE NATURE OP THE STATE [bk. i

frame of mind which judges the State by the taxes
that it raises ; which does not feel that, if the State
may not press like an egg-shell, it cannot protect either,
and that the moral benefits which we owe to the State
are beyond all price. It is because it begets this
materialism that the small State has so pernicious an
effect on the mind of its citizens.

There is also completely lacking in small States the
ability of the great State to be just. Whoever in a
small State has a sufficient number of cousins, and is
not quite an imbecile, is soon provided for. Of course
the justice of the great State may easily degenerate
into routine; it is not altogether possible here so to
take into account personal and local conditions as in
the narrower circumstances of small States. . . Thus
administration by routine is an inevitable weakness
of great States ; but it can be considerably mitigated
by a greater independence of provinces and muni-
cipalities.

Thus, when we sum up, we arrive at this result :
that the great State has the nobler capacity. That is
true above all of the great fundamental functions of
the State, protection by arms, and law-making. Both
can be much better carried out in a great State than in
the small one. . .

Again, the economic superiority of great States is
very obvious. In such great relations there lies also a

§ l] THE CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 19

magnificent assurance of one's own safety. Economic
crises can be far more easily surmounted by a great
State than by a small one ; failure of crops, for
instance, will hardly affect it in all its parts. Only in
great States can there be developed that genuine
national pride which is the sign of the moral efficiency
of a nation ; the cosmopolitanism of the citizens becomes
freer and greater in greater relations. Especially does
the command of the sea work in this direction. " The
free sea frees the mind ; " that expression of the poet's
is entirely true. A time may come when States with-
out oversea possessions will no longer count among „
the crreat States at all.

We must thus be careful not to make pedantic
inferences from detached facts; but, if we survey
history in the mass, it is clear that all real master-
pieces of poetry and art arose upon the soil of great
nationalities. Proud Florence and Venice had such a
great world-intercourse that there could be no question
in their cases of the Philistinism of the small State.
In the great mass of the citizens there was an ideal
pride that recalls ancient Athens. The poet and artist
must be able to react upon a great nation. When did
a masterpiece ever arise among a petty little nation ?
The " Lusiads" belongs to a time in which Portugal had

20 THE NATURE OF THE STATE [bk. i

discovered half the world. Thorwaldsen was no Dane ;
he was born on a ship on the voyage from Iceland to
Denmark, and came very early to Rome. Of Danish
qualities one discovers absolutely nothing in his works.
He was a modern Hellene ; to the question what his
birthday was, he answered : " I don't know ; I came for
the first time to Rome on March 8th, 1797."

More frequently to be observed in modern history
are the momentous consequences of an exclusively
social existence. A nation that lives for nothing but
these social desires, that wishes only to become richer
and to live more comfortably, falls a complete victim
to the baser natural instincts. What a splendid people
the Dutch were in the days of combat against the
Spanish world-power ! Hardly was their independence
assured, however, when all the curse of peace also began
to have its effects upon the people. In misfortune
there lies a hardening influence for noble nations ; in
prosperity even they run the risk of becoming a prey
to sloth. Thus the once so brave Dutchmen have
turned into creditors of the State and have degenerated
thereby, even physically. That is the curse of a people
that is quite engrossed in social life and loses the taste
for political greatness.

§2] THE AIM OF THE STATE 21

§ 2. The Aim. of the State.

. . . Here it is very obvious that the first task of
the State is a twofold one: it is, as we have seen,
power in an external direction and the regulation of
justice internally; its fundamental functions must
therefore be the organization of the army and the
administration of the law, in order to protect the
communitv of its citizens from external attack, and to
keep them within bounds internally. . .

The second essential function of the State is to
make war. That we have so long failed to appreciate
this, is a proof how effeminate the science of the State
as treated by the hands of civilians had finally become.
In our century, since Clausewitz, this sentimental con-
ception has disappeared ; but its place has been taken
by a narrowly materialistic one, which looks upon
man, after the manner of Manchester dom, as a two-
legged being whose destiny is to buy cheap and to sell
dear. That this conception is also very unfavourable to
war is explainable; only after the experiences of our last
wars did a healthy view of the State and its warlike
power gradually emerge again. Without war there
would be no State at all. All the States known to us

22 THE NATURE OF THE STATE [nK. i

have arisen through wars ; the protection of its citizens
by arms remains the first and essential task of the
State. And so war will last till the end of history,
as long as there is a plural number of States. That
it could ever be otherwise is neither to be deduced
from the laws of thought or from human nature,
nor in any way desirable. The blind worshippers of
perpetual peace commit the error of thought, that they
isolate the State or dream of a World-State, which we
have already recognized as something irrational.

Since it is, further, impossible, as we have also
already seen, even to picture to oneself a higher judge
above States, which are sovereign by their nature, the
condition of war cannot be imagined away out of the
world. It is a favourite fashion of our time to hold
up England as especially inclined to peace. But
England is always making war ; there has been hardly
a moment in modern history in which she had not to
fight somewhere. The great advances of mankind in
civilization can only be entirely realized, in face of the
resistance of barbarism and unreason, by the sword.
And even among the civilized peoples war remains
the form of lawsuit by which the claims of States are
enforced. The proofs which are led in these dreadful
international lawsuits are more compelling than the
proofs in any civil lawsuit. How often did we seek
to convince the small States theoretically that only

§2] THE AIM OF THE STATE 23

Prussia could assume the leadership in Germany ; the
really convincing proof we were obliged to furnish on
the battlefields in Bohemia and on the Main. War is
also an element that unites nations, not one that only
separates them : it does not only bring nations together
as enemies ; they also learn through it to know and
respect one another in their particular idiosyncrasies.

We must, of course, also remember in our considera-
tion of war that it does not always appear as a divine
judgement ; here, too, there are transient successes, but
the life of nations is reckoned by centuries. We can
only obtain the final verdict by the survey of long
epochs. A State like the Prussian, which by the
qualities of its people was always freer and more
rational internally than the French, might indeed,
because of transient enervation, come near to destruc-
tion, but it was able again to remember its inner
nature and maintain its superiority. One must say in
the most decided manner : " War is the only remedy
for ailing nations." The moment the State calls :
" Myself and my existence are now at stake ! " social
self-seeking must fall back and every party hate be
silent. The individual must forget his own ego and
feel himself a member of the whole ; he must recog-
nize what a nothing his life is in comparison with the
general welfare. In that very point lies the loftiness
of war, that the small man disappears entirely before

24 THE NATURE OF THE STATE [bk. i

the great thought of the State ; the sacrifice of fellow-
countrymen for one another is nowhere so splendidly
exhibited as in war. In such days the chaff is separated
from the wheat. . .

It is precisely political idealism that demands wars,
while materialism condemns them. What a perver-
sion of morality to wish to eliminate heroism from
humanity ! It is the heroes of a nation who are the
figures that delight and inspire youthful minds ; and
among authors it is those whose words ring like the
sound of trumpets whom as boys and youths we most
admire. He who does not delight in them is too
cowardly to bear arms himself for the fatherland.
All reference to Christianity in this case is perverse.
The Bible says explicitly that the powers that be shall
bear the sword, and it also says : " Greater love hath no
man than this, that a man lay down his life for his
friends." Those who declaim this nonsense of a per-
petual peace do not understand the Aryan peoples ;
the Aryan peoples are above all things brave. They
have always been men enough to protect with the
sword what they had won by the spirit. . .

We must not consider all these things by the light
of the reading-lamp alone ; to the historian who lives
in the world of will it is immediately clear that the
demand for a perpetual peace is thoroughly reaction-
ary ; he sees that with war all movement, all growth,

§2] THE AIM OF THE STATE 25

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. . .
However, it is not worth the trouble to discuss this
matter further ; the living God will see to it that war
constantly returns as a dreadful medicine for the
- Jiuman race.

With all this it is not our intention to deny that
with the progress of civilization wars must become
fewer and shorter. All civilization aims at making
human life more harmonious. Just as the abrupt
alternation of sensualism and asceticism, which is
characteristic of the Middle Ages, is no longer natural
to the men of to-day, so does war, which connotes a
complete breach with the everyday life, appear for that
very reason so dreadful to us. The more refined man
perceives, indeed, that he must kill hostile opponents,
whose bravery he esteems highly ; he feels that the
majesty of war consists in the very fact that murder
is done in this case without passion ; therefore the
struggle costs him much more self-conquest than it
does the barbarian.

And the economic ravages of war are also much
greater with civilized nations than with barbarians.
A war nowadays may ha-ve stern, fearful consequences,
especially through the destruction of the ingenious
credit system. If it were ever to happen that a

26 THE NATURE OF THE STATE [bk. i

conqueror entered London, the effect would be simply
appalling. There meet the threads of the credit of
millions, and a conqueror of Napoleon's ruthlessness
could cause ravages there of which we have as yet not
the slightest conception. From the natural horror
men have for the shedding of blood, from the size and
quality of modern armies, it necessarily follows that
wars must become fewer and shorter, for it is impos-
sible to see how the burdens of a great war can be
borne for any prolonged period under present con-
ditions in the world. But it is a fallacy to infer from
that that they could ever cease altogether. They
cannot and should not cease, so long as the State is
sovereign and confronts other sovereign States.

§ 3. The Relation of the State to the Moral Law.

... It was Machiavelli who expressed the thought
that, when the safety of the State was at stake, the
purity of the means employed should not be called in
question ; if only the State were preserved, every one
would subsequently approve of the means. In order
to understand Machiavelli, we must take him histori-
cally. He is the son of a race that is in the act of
passing out of the limitations of the Middle Ages into
the subjective freedom of modern thought. Hound

§ 8] RELATION OF STATE TO MORAL LAW 27

about him in Italy he saw the prodigious forms of
those tyrants in whom the lavish endowments of that
gifted people were so wonderfully exhibited. These
tyrants of Italy were all born Maecenases ; they also
said, like the great artist : "I am myself alone."
Machiavelli took delight in these gifted, powerful men.
It will ever remain Machiavelli's glory that he set the
State upon its own feet and freed it in its morality
from the Church ; and also, above all, that he declared
clearly for the first time : " The State is power." In
spite of this, however, Machiavelli himself still stands
with one foot on the threshold of the Middle Ages.
When he tries to set the State free from the Church,
and says, with the boldness of the modern Italian
patriot, that the Chair of Rome has hurled Italy into
despair and misery, he nevertheless does not get rid of
the idea that morality is altogether ecclesiastical, and,
while he drags the State away from the Church, he
drags it away from the moral law altogether. He
says : " The State must pursue its power as its only
objective ; what is good for that purpose is proper and
necessary." Machiavelli tries to think as one of the
ancients, and yet he cannot do it, because he has eaten
of the tree of knowledge ; because he is a Christian
without knowing it and without wishing it.

Thus his view of the freedom of political morality
has remained in many ways a troubled and confused '

28 THE NATURE OF THE STATE [bk. i

one, because of his place in a period of transition.
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. We must never forget this great service of
Machiavelli's, even if we clearly recognize the deep
immorality in other respects of his teaching regarding
the State. It is not the fact that he is entirely
indifferent as to the means employed by power that
revolts us, but that everything turns upon how the
highest power is acquired and retained, and that this
power itself has no content for him. That the power
acquired must justify itself by employing itself for the
highest moral good of mankind, of that we find no
trace in his teaching.

Machiavelli has entirely failed to see how this
doctrine of mere power is self-contradictory even from
his own standpoint. Whom does he put forward as
the ideal of a clever and capable prince ? Caesar
Borgia. But can this uncanny man be looked upon as
the ideal of a statesman even in Machiavelli's sense ?
Did he, by chance, create anything enduring ? His
State was broken up immediately after his death.
After he had brought countless numbers into the trap,

§ 3] RELATION OF STATE TO MORAL LAW 29

he was enticed into it himself and perished miserably.
A power that treads all right underfoot must in the
end itself perish, for in the moral world nothing
remains firm that is not able to resist.

Since, then, Machiavelli's ideas stand out in terrible
nakedness and hardness, the book of " The Prince " has
in it for most men something quite terrifying, but its
effects up to the present day have been immense.
Even Napoleon III.'s coup d'ttat was evidently prepared
according to Machiavelli's recipe. The book has in
practice become a teacher again and again, mostly in
his own time ; William of Orange kept it constantly
under the pillow of his couch. The whole seventeenth
century is filled with Machiavellism, with a statesman-
ship which tramples the moral laws underfoot as a
matter of principle. This " reason of State," a policy
that inquires only concerning expediency for the State,
becomes towards the end of the seventeenth century of
an unscrupulousness such as we can no longer form an
idea of nowadays. The ugly connotation that the word
" political " has had so long among the common people
dates from that period. Machiavelli's book was called
" The Devil's Catechism," or " The Ten Commandments
Reversed " ; his name became a term of disgust ; a great
literature of works written against him arose, each one
more moral than the other. It is sad to observe that
so-called public opinion is always much more moral

30 THE NATURE OF THE STATE [bk. i

than the deeds of the individuals themselves. The
average man is ashamed to mention publicly and to
approve a thousand things that he actually does.
What the ordinary man, when he is not himself con-
cerned, can accomplish in the way of Cossack-like
defence of virtue is unbelievable. He who has felt
profoundly unhappy, he who has once believed that he
would never escape from his inward grief, may become
a misanthropist when he listens to his comforters.
Therefore among all nations the public opinion that
comes to the light is very naturally much more severe
than the real thoughts of men.

Of course journalistic phrase-mongers talk of great
statesmen as of a disreputable class of men, as if lying
was inseparable from diplomacy. The very opposite is
the truth. The really great statesmen have always
been distinguished by an immense openness. Frederick
the Great declared before every one of his wars with
the greatest precision what it was he wished to attain.
It is true that he did not despise cunning as a means,
but upon the whole his truthfulness is one of his
predominant characteristics. How potent, with all
his slyness in details, is Bismarck's solid frankness
in great matters ! And it was the most effective
weapon for him, for the small diplomatists always

§ 3] RELATION OF STATE TO MOEAL LAW 31

believed the opposite when he frankly declared what
he wanted. If we survey human callings, in which
are the most lies told ? Obviously in the world of
commerce ; and that has been so at all times. Here
in the matter of advertising lying has been actually
turned into a system. Compared with it diplomacy
appears innocent as a dove. And the immeasurable
difference therewith ! If an unscrupulous speculator
lies on the Stock Exchange, he thinks only of his own
purse; but a diplomatist thinks of his country if
during a political negotiation he becomes guilty of an
obscuration of facts. As historians, who seek to survey
the whole of human life, we must therefore say that
the diplomatic calling is a much more moral one than
that of the merchant. The moral danger that is
nearest to the diplomatist does not lie in mendacity,
but in the spiritual shallowness that is born of the
elegant life of the salon.

If we now apply this standard of a more profound
and genuinely Christian morality to the State, and if
we remember that the essence of this great collective
personality is power, then it is in that case the highest
moral duty of the State to safeguard its power. The
individual must sacrifice himself for a higher com-
munity, of which he is a member; but the State is

32 THE NATURE OF THE STATE [bk. t

itself the highest in the external community of men,
therefore the duty of self-elimination cannot affect it at
all. The Christian duty of self-sacrifice for something
higher has no existence whatever for the State, because
there is nothing whatever beyond it in world-history ;
consequently it cannot sacrifice itself for anything
higher. If the State sees its downfall confronting it,
we praise it if it falls sword in hand. Self-sacrifice
for a foreign nation is not only not moral, but it
contradicts the idea of self-preservation, which is the
highest thing for the State.

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. . .

It further follows from the nature of the State as
sovereign Power that it cannot recognize an arbiter

§ 3] RELATION OF STATE TO MORAL LAW 33

above itself, and consequently legal obligations must
in the last resort be subject to its own judgement. We
must keep this in view, in order not to judge pedanti-
cally in great crises from the standpoint of the advocate.
When Prussia broke the treaty of Tilsit, it was in the
wrong from the standpoint of civil law. But who will
have the brazenness to maintain this at the present
time ? The French themselves do so no longer. This
is true also of international treaties, which are not
quite as immoral as that compulsory one between
Prussia and France was. Thus every State reserves
to itself the right to decide upon its treaty obligations,
and here the historian cannot make a merely formal
standard suffice. He must ask the deeper question :
whether the unconditioned duty of self-preservation
does not justify the State. Such was the case in Italy
in 1859. Formally, of course, Piedmont was the
aggressor ; and Austria and her servile adherents in
Germany were not slow to complain of the interrup-
tion of the perpetual peace. In reality, however, Italy
had been for years under martial law. No noble
nation endures such a position, and as a matter of
fact it was not Piedmont, but Austria, that was the
aggressor, for she had sinned shamelessly for years
against the greatest good of the Italians.

Thus the mere preservation of its power is an in-
comparably high moral task for the State. But, if we

34 THE NATURE OF THE STATE [bk. i

follow out the consequences of this truth, it is clear
that the State must only set moral aims before it,
otherwise it would contradict itself. The policy, in
principle immoral, of naked and brutal greed of terri-
tory, as Napoleon I. pursued it, is also in the highest
degree impolitic. France had in no wise the power
to assimilate its conquests and, as Napoleon desired,
to become the leading State of Europe. It was a sin
against the spirit of history that the rich diversity of
kindred peoples should be changed into the dreary
uniformity of a world-empire. Such a naked policy
of conquest in the long run destroys its own instru-
ments. When Napoleon made his appearance, his
army was the best in Europe. It was supported by
the moral strength of genuine enthusiasm and a dis-
cipline worthy of admiration. How was this changed
in the year 1812 ! Napoleon brought only a fourth
part of his troops to Moscow, without having lost a
battle. A moral disorderliness had set in, which really
decided the Russian campaign. The policy of world-
conquest of our ancient German empire we also recog-
nize to-day to have been a huge blunder. It presumed
to take possession of countries which could not be fitted
to the national State as living members. We have
been punished for these sins for centuries since by our
passive cosmopolitanism. It is just as immoral, and
impolitic at the same time, if the State interferes by

§ 3] RELATION OF STATE TO MORAL LAW 35

forcible repression with the religious life of its subjects,
for here it touches the marrow of its people. Through
the fact that Austria, during the religious struggles,
persecuted and expelled many of her best Germans,
Germanism in that State suffered a blow from which
it has not yet recovered.

So even the State is everywhere subjected to the
laws of its moral nature, which it may not infringe with
impunity. Statesmanship demands an iron character,
a man of strong nerves, who is in a position to over-
come in the numerous conflicts to which it leads. It
demands above all great intelligence. Astuteness is
for the statesman, on whose shoulders the fate of
millions rests, not only an intellectual, but a moral
virtue. He must be able to observe things as they
really are ; and, if he cannot do that, he must keep
his awkward hands away from things he does not
understand. . .

Thus far there can hardly have been anything that
serious thinkers will dispute, but, on the other hand, a
series of the most difficult questions begins with the con-
sideration to what extent, for intrinsically moral aims,
it is permissible in politics to employ means which in
ordinary civil life would be looked upon as reprehen-
sible. The well-known expression of the Jesuits is
indeed brutal and radical in its abruptness, but no one
can dispute the fact that it contains a certain amount

36 THE NATUEE OF THE STATE [bk. i

of truth. There are, unfortunately, numberless cases
in the life of the State, as in the life of the individual,
in which the employment of perfectly pure means is
impossible. If it is possible, if an intrinsically moral
aim can be attained with moral means, these are to be
preferred, even if they lead more slowly and awkwardly
to the goal.

We have already seen that the power of truth and
openness in politics is much greater than is usually
maintained. The modern idea is that there is no love
of truth at all in man ; everything is said to have
arisen conventionally in course of law because of the
object in view. No, there is a love of truth born in
us that varies only according to times and peoples.
Even among the nations most given to lying, the
Orientals, we find this love of truth. Wellington's
elder brother acquired an immense power in India
through the fact that the Nabobs knew : " This man
always says what he thinks." On the whole, however,
it is clear that the means which policy employs towards
peoples which are still on a lower level of civilization
must be suited to their capacity of feeling and com-
prehension. The historian who would judge European
policy in Africa or in the East in the same way as that
in Europe would be a fool. He who cannot instil fear
in these places is lost. If the English during the
Indian Mutiny tied the Hindus to the mouths of the

§ 3] EELATION OF STATE TO MORAL LAW 37

cannons and blew them to pieces, so that their bodies
were scattered to all the winds, we cannot blame that,
seeing that death immediately supervened. It is clear
that in such a position terrorizing means had to be
adopted ; and if we accept as true, what an Englisman
will certainly maintain, that the English rule in India
is moral and necessary, then we cannot in that case
condemn these means.

Thus it behoves us to apply the standard of rela-
tivity to place as well as to time. If you remember,
further, that in international intercourse States very
often remain for many decades in a condition of veiled
warfare, then it is quite evident that many diplomatic
wiles are justified by this condition of latent warfare
alone. Think of the negotiations between Bismarck
and Benedetti. Bismarck had the hope that he might
possibly still avoid a great war ; then Benedetti came
with his shameless demands ; was it not quite moral
for Bismarck to put him off with half-promises, as if
Germany might consent ? The like is the case with
methods of bribery against another State in such cir-
cumstances of latent warfare. It is ridiculous to
oppose this with moral bluster and to demand that
in such a position a State should always take its cate-
chism in its hand first. Before the outbreak of the
Seven Years' War Frederick had the presentiment that
some storm was gathering over his little State. There-

to r- o

38 THE NATURE OF THE STATE [bk. i

upon he bribed two Saxon-Polish secretaries in Dresden
and Warsaw and obtained news from them, which
fortunately was exaggerated. Should King Frederick,
when he put to himself the question : " How shall I
rescue my noble Prussia from ruin ? " have had respect
for the official regulations of the electorate of Saxony ?
Every State knows this about the other : there is no
State in the world that at such junctures would not
keep rascals for the purpose of spying. Only the
results of such means must not be exaggerated ; they
play only a small part. But it is clear that they must
be permitted to the Foreign Office of a great nation
against alien States.

Within our own State, on the other hand, the
morality must be much purer and more susceptible,
for the regulations of my own State are sacred to me.
As for inner party politics, the existence of forms of
corruption can be established everywhere. In our
Parliaments there are, of course, occasional cases of
tacit, indirect corruption. That the shareholders of
great industrial undertakings practise bribery, appears
indeed from time to time, but it is nevertheless com-
paratively rare. Look at England, on the other hand,
with its Parliament, half of which consists of railway
directors, or at Spain !

§4] THE RISE AND FALL OF STATES 39

§ 4. The Rise and Fall of States.

. . . States do not arise out of the people's sovereignty,
but they are created against the will of the people ;
the State is the power of the stronger race which
establishes itself.

And indeed there is nothing to be regretted in all
this. In conditions so simple material power must
decide, and this power of the victor justifies itself
morally, by becoming a protection and thereby working
beneficially. How wittily has Thucydides expressed
this in the introduction to his history, which contains
a host of flashes of inspired thought ! In it he portrays
the half-legendary Minos of Crete, how he conquered
the supremacy for himself, but then used his assured
power to free the seas round about from pirates, and
thereby to make his supremacy beneficial and bear-
able. In the further course of history, also, among
all forces that we know, war is the mightiest and most
efficient moulder of nations. Only in war does a nation
became a nation, and the expansion of existing States
proceeds in most cases by the way of conquest, even
if afterwards the results of the armed combat are
recognized by treaty.

40 THE NATURE OF THE STATE [bk. i

All great nations of history, when they had become
strong, have felt the craving to impress the seal of
their nature upon barbaric lands. And to-day we see
the nations of Europe busily engaged in creating all
over the globe a wholesale aristocracy of the white race.
That nation which does not take a share in this great
rivalry will play a pitiful part at some later day. It
is therefore a vital question for a great nation to-day to
display a craving for colonies. The first nation of
history to recognize the majesty of a world-trade, the
Phoenician, was also a great colonizer. Then follows
the colonization of the Greeks in the eastern and western
basins of the Mediterranean ; then the Romans ; in the
Middle Ages the Germans, Spanish and Portuguese ;
finally Holland and England, after the Germans were
entirely eliminated for a long space from the number
of maritime powers.

Agricultural colonies are certainly the richest in
blessings for the national life. In districts which in
their climate correspond in some measure to our own
and permit large emigration from the mother country,
as huge an increase of population as we find in America
can, under favourable economic conditions, take place.
But in the case of such colonies the danger is also
most threatening, of their turning against the mother
country and seeking to break loose from it. England,
schooled by experience, has learned to avoid this. The

§4] THE ELSE AND FALL OF STATES 41

independence of the English colonies goes so far,
indeed, that they have even tariff walls against the
mother country.

The reciprocal relations between colony and mother
country belong to the most delicate problems of history,
and in this case we should beware of endeavouring to
discover natural laws in the world of history, that is
to say, in the world of freedom. No one will try to
maintain to-day that colonies must of necessity break
loose from the mother country. That Canada will do
this one day is probable, above all because the best part
of Canada is French. "Whether, on the other hand,
Australia will ever break away, is more than doubtful ;
an English policy of some astuteness would probably
be able to prevent that. It will depend what men are
at the wheel in Australia and England, and how they
recognize the signs of the times. But, even if England
found herself compelled to give up a part of her
colonies, she would still retain an incalculable advan-
tage as regards culture and economics, for the bond of
the mother tongue is an eminently important momentum
in trade. Thus North America's principal business
connection is still with England. A colony, that is
attached to the mother country by language and
culture, never becomes entirely lost to it, even if it
breaks away politically. That is also proved by the
relations between America and England. What does

42 THE NATURE OF THE STATE [bk. i

it not signify, that there will soon be three hundred
millions of English-speaking people ?

We, on the other hand, see to-day what we have
missed. The consequences of the last half-century
have been terrible ; in it England has first conquered
the world. The Continent, in continual unrest, had
no time to turn its eyes across the sea, where England
seized upon everything. The Germans have been
obliged to miss this and to sleep through it, because
they had so much to do with their neighbours and
with their own internal struggles. Without any
doubt whatever a great colonial development is a
fortunate thing for a nation. And that is where the
short-sightedness of our opponents of colonies at the pre-
sent day comes in, that they do not understand this.
Yet the whole position of Germany hangs upon how
many millions of people will speak German in the future.

If it is maintained that the emigration of Germans
to America is an advantage, that is a piece of folly.
What has Germany gained from the fact that thousands
of her best sons, who could not find a livelihood at
home, have turned their backs on the fatherland ?
They are lost to it for ever. If the emigrant himself
is perhaps still united by certain natural ties to his
home, his children, as a rule, but in any case his grand-
children, are Germans no more ; for the German learns
only too easily to renounce his fatherland. And indeed

§4] THE RISE AND FALL OF STATES 43

in America they are in no position to maintain their
nationality permanently. Just as certainly as the
Huguenots, when they immigrated into the march of
Brandenburg, were on the average more cultivated than
the Brandenburgers and were yet obliged to lose their
nationality amid the multitude of the old inhabitants,
in like manner was this the case with the Germans in
America. Almost a third of the population of North
America is of German origin. How much of the most
valuable energies have we lost through emigration,
and are still losing daily, without obtaining even the
slightest compensation therefor ! The working power
as well as the capital of the emigrants is lost to us.
What incalculable financial advantages would these
people afford us as colonists !

Thus that colonization which preserves homogeneous
nationality has become a factor of huge importance for
the future of the world. It will depend upon it in
what measure each nation will participate in the
domination of the world by the white race ; it is very
easily conceivable that a country that has no colonies
will one day cease to be numbered among the Great
Powers of Europe, however powerful it may be other-
wise. On that account we must not arrive at that
stage of torpor which is the consequence of a purely
continental policy, and the result of our next successful
war must if possible be the acquisition of some colony ,

44 THE NATUKE OF THE STATE [bk. i

§ 5. Government and Governed.

The position is similar in military affairs. Formerly,
so long as the State was looked upon as an economic
undertaking, the opinion prevailed in Germany that
the economic principle of division of labour should also
be applied to the army. Professional soldiers, well-
drilled mercenaries, were demanded, so that civilian
life should be preserved as much as possible from the
confusion of war. Only stern and great experiences
have brought a change in this matter, and now even
the average man feels that military affairs stand
higher than economic interests, that they are exalted
beyond all price, that it is here a matter of moral
energies, and that these are most surely awakened and
turned to account when the obligation to bear arms is
universal.

This naive selfishness of the governed is opposed by
the essentially politic view of those who govern, who
do not look upon the State from within a group of
interests, but from the standpoint of the whole. They
think first of the power and unity of the whole;
and, as they bear the heavy responsibility of the fate
of millions, they look upon strict obedience as the first
requisite. Therefore, in every sound government the
need of permanence must predominate. It is a well-

§5] GOVERNMENT AND GOVERNED 45

known experience that members of the opposition who
have entered the government have in most cases to
suffer the reproach of their former associates that they
have changed their opinions and are no longer free.
Quite wrongly ; for the same men, who formerly
criticized the government from a partial standpoint,
now see for the first time that it has to study many
other circles of interests. It is for that reason that
self-administration is of such great political importance,
for it fills even the middle classes with the ideas of
the government. When the greatest possible number
of citizens is attracted to political self-activity and
helps to bear the responsibility of administration, a
great proportion of the nation is filled with expert
knowledge of political affairs and acquires also some-
thing of the feeling of responsibility.

From an unprejudiced consideration of history it
clearly results that parties are a political necessity for
free peoples. By means of party life the countless
opinions of all individuals are concentrated in an
average opinion, which establishes the vague opinion
of the individual in a definite direction. If the neces-
sity of taking a side may be beneficial as a stimulus
for many natures, on the other hand the terrorism of
the party system has also, of course, a pernicious

46 THE NATURE OF THE STATE [bk.i,§5

effect, for it is clear that every party is and must be
one-sided. A purely national party can only be found,
say, in nations that are still fighting for independence,
for liberation from an anti-national power. Thus a
union of all parties took place in Piedmont in 1859
under the influence of Cavour. That great man carried
all parties in the State along with him at that time ;
all opposition grew silent before the common task of
the national unity of Italy. In a well-ordered, inde-
pendent State there will be no national party. The
name " national liberal " was a brilliant discovery,
sounding so well that it pleases everybody, but it is
only a name.

BOOK II. THE SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS
OF THE STATE

§ 6. Country and People.

Thus the same geographical conditions have had very
different effects according to the degrees of civilization
of the inhabitants. The history of England shows
this very conspicuously. England has always been an
island ; but what different effects this insular position
has had at different periods ! In the days of the
Norwegian sea-kings, when the Vikings ruled all the
seas, an island was more exposed to hostile attacks
than the mainland. A wholesome shaking-up of differ-
ent ethnographical elements took place; and so that
mixture of peoples became possible on which Eng-
land's modern history is essentially based. In later
days, when the organization of the sea-robbers was
broken up, and the country became more thickly
populated, Shakespeare could speak of the silver
wall behind which England might stand calmly and
securely. That is still true to-day ; and so the same
insular position has made possible for the country

48 SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF STATE [be. ii

in modern times an almost uninterrupted national
development.

Thus we see how climatic conditions regulate economic
and civilized life in the strictest fashion. . .

If we apply this standard, we may again regard
England as wonderfully preferred by Nature. Her
situation and configuration are enviably favourable ; a
temperate, moist climate, which allows the fruits of
the field to ripen in a way that is not by a long way
possible in our East. In England the farmer is only
obliged to stop work for about four weeks, while ours
must be idle almost all winter. Add to this the insular
position, the configuration of the coast, the short rivers,
which, however, are accessible to ebb and flow. A few
leagues above London the Thames is a tiny, charming
stream, flowing among meadows ; at London it is a
powerful river, which carries the largest ships. A
brave and diligent nation was bound of necessity to
become great and powerful under such conditions.

As for the geographical conditions of the State,
among all the gifts of Nature there is none in this
connection more valuable than position on the sea.
Yet it depends in this case also whether a nation
understands how to make use of this advantage. The
Spartans, as is well known, had a coast-line as well as

§6] COUNTRY AND PEOPLE 49

the Athenians, yet their State always remained an
inland State, while Athens became great as a sea-
power. It may be asserted that a great development
of the State without the sea is in the long run im-
possible. Every State that calls itself great, whose
endeavour it is to stand upon its own feet, must have
a coast. Only by means of it is it really free. That
is so evident that whole epochs of history can be
explained from this one circumstance. The key to
the opposition between Poland and Germany is to be
found here. When German colonization had proceeded
so far to the east along the coast, while the hinterland
remained Slavonic, a deadly enmity, which no one
could prevent, was the result. Poland was obliged to
endeavour to win for herself the mouths of her streams;
the Germans on their side could not permit that. A
geographical opposition was thereby produced, which
did not admit of alteration. Every young, rising nation
presses forward remorselessly towards the sea-coast. As
soon as the Hungarians had carried through their
dualism in 1867, the first thing they did was to
demand for themselves, and to obtain, too, from the
weakness of Austria, the old land on the sea-coast;
thus Hungary got her port of Fiume.

In all this there lies a natural compulsion. The
sea has an invigorating effect on all the customs of a
people ; in the case of seafaring nations complete want

50 SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF STATE [bk. ii

of freedom can only be found as an exception. There
is hardly any calling practised by men which rejects
all inefficiency so thoroughly as that of the sailor ;
that is why human energy can prosper so freely in this
calling. It breeds an essentially democratic view of
things that inquires and judges by what is achieved
alone. If we compare Sparta and Athens we see clearly
how the sea-power of Athens reacted upon the whole
character of the State ; in contrast to Sparta, which
always remained inland and never obtained a
spiritually free horizon.

Our stick-in-the-mud conditions in Germany have
been the fault principally of the purely inland policy
of the house of Hapsburg. Wallenstein appears in
this connection like a meteor ; he was an inspired
genius, who certainly conceived the thought of making
a German seaport out of the bay of the Jahde and of
excavating a canal between the North Sea and the
Baltic. Germany has, it must be admitted, been cared
for by Nature in stepmotherly fashion. The Baltic
bears overwhelmingly the character of an inland sea.
This can be recognized from the fact that the effect of
the sea upon the people who dwell beside it is very
small. A few leagues from the coast in Pomerania
one hardly guesses that one is near the sea. The North
Sea has the worst shore imaginable in Germany because
of the sand-flats. The whole is as unfavourable as

§6] COUNTKY AND PEOPLE 51

possible ; but even here can be seen how man is able
to overcome natural obstacles. This Germany with
its forbidding coast-line was yet once on a time the
leading sea-power, and, please God, it shall become
so again.

The territories drained by great rivers are usually
centres of civilization. Even in the most ancient times
it followed the great streams, the Hoang-ho and Yang-
tse-kiang, the Indus, Ganges and Nile. Germany,
otherwise treated by Nature in such stepmotherly
fashion, is in this instance to be called fortunate — if it
ever fulfils its mission, if it one day possesses its stream
entire. Our Khine remains the king of all rivers.
What great thing has ever happened on the Danube ?
On the contrary, on the Ehine, wherever we go, there
is historical life in plenty. From the oldest days of
the Germans up to the most modern times, what a
wealth of historical reminiscences ! The French, or even
the Italians, cannot excel us in this. It is an infinitely
precious natural possession, but through our own fault
the part that is of most material value has come into
foreign hands, and it is an indispensable task of
German policy to win back the mouths of the stream.
A purely political union is not necessary, for the Dutch
have now developed into an independent nation ; but

52 SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF STATE [bk. h

an economic alliance is indispensable. And we are
much too shy if we do not venture to declare that the
entrance of Holland into our Customs Union is as
necessary to us as our daily bread. Nowhere in the
world is there so much declaiming by fools about
Chauvinism as in Germany, and nowhere is there so
little Chauvinism as with us. We fear to give ex-
pression to the most natural claims that a nation can
have.

The configuration of the boundary of the State
is at the present day more important than at any
previous epoch of history. To be able to concentrate
forces on the frontier is an immeasurable advantage
in an age of wars in mass. Undoubtedly, the sea is
the most fortunate frontier that a country can have.
The desire of all States for self-preservation explains
the fact that the high seas are considered as quite
free; on the other hand, every State polices the sea
facing its coast-line, so far as it can dominate it in a
military sense, that is, within cannon-range. It has,
indeed, become doubtful what is to be understood by
this, but new arrangements will be come to regarding
it. On the whole it will be established that on the
sea the power of the State ceases where its physical
force ceases. The sea does not only separate, it also

§6] COUNTRY AND PEOPLE 53

unites all nations ; therefore the sea-coast is the most
advantageous politically, as the position of England
shows very clearly. Of course, a wholly insular posi-
tion may also lull a nation into a dangerous feeling of
security and detract from its military strength.

In every case in judging the climate and the other
natural conditions of a country the question turns, in
the first place, upon the conditions of material life
which result therefrom. The moral and the purely
aesthetic take the second place. But the latter must
not on that account be undervalued. The misty, foggy
climate has had a by no means favourable effect upon
the inhabitants of England ; in London there are times
when in a thick fog the spleen lies in the air. Besides,
the country lacks wine, and wine is undeniably an
important factor in a cheerful, liberal culture. If our
Bhenish country-folk boast with pride that they have
wine in their bones, they are in a certain sense quite
justified. A drink that only intoxicates slightly, and
does not, like brandy, produce a bestial drunken-
ness, enlivens and relieves the mind. It will never
be possible for a true Rhinelander to become accus-
tomed to the beer-tippling which prevails among us
here.

The climate, the lack of wine and of beauty of

54 SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF STATE [bk. ii

scenery have indisputably had an unfavourable effect
upon English culture. While the English can exhibit
a truly great literature, they have never achieved any-
thing outstanding in music or in the fine arts ; poetry,
in particular, is much less dependent upon these natural
conditions than the fine arts or music. In fact, there
is even a beauty and majestic elevation of Nature that
oppresses men. What example of artistic greatness
has proceeded from the magnificent Alpine countries ?
Kelatively very little. Walther von der Vogelweide,
if he really came thence, would be the only great poet
that the Tyrol has brought forth ; and even Switzer-
land has only lately produced a true poet in Gottfried
Keller. It has always been the case that a country
of lofty mountains has only by way of exception been
the seat of higher culture. There simple conditions
exist, heroic jager-natures, men for the most part
sturdy and well built, but also of limited outlook. On
the contrary, countries with mountains of moderate
height, like the charming valleys of Suabia and Fran-
conia and the friendly chains of green heights of
Thuringia, have produced a multitude of poets and
artists. He who does not feel poetically inclined in
Heidelberg or in Bonn is lost to poetry altogether.
There Nature has an elevating and gladdening effect,
without oppressing men.

§6] COUNTEY AND TEOPLE 55

The English are the most fortunate. The popula-
tion of this little island has thrown out so many shoots
that there are already at the present time more than
a hundred millions of people of English descent. In
this fact alone is the importance of colonies revealed.
A nation which seeks to acquire new realms of ex-
ploitation, in order to be able to support its growing
population, shows the courage of its confidence in God.
The contemptuous way in which these deeply serious
things are discussed at the present time is simply
appalling. People sing a new song to the old tune :
" Be smaller, fatherland of mine!" That is simply turn-
ing the world upside-down. We wish and ought to take
our share in the domination of the world by the white
race. We have still an infinite deal to learn from
England in this connection, and a press that tries to
dismiss these serious things with some poor jokes
shows that it has no suspicion whatever of the sacred-
ness of our tasks of civilization. It is a healthy and
normal phenomenon when a civilized nation anticipates
the obvious dangers of over-population by colonization
on a large scale. There is no mutilation of Nature
practised here, and a wide field for healthy activity is
opened up, which at the same time increases the
national strength of the mother country. For all talk
of possible separation of the colonies is folly, when one
observes what even separated colonies still mean for

56 SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF STATE [bk. ii

the mother country. The material and moral benefits
of such an increase of the nation cannot possibly be
estimated sufficiently highly.

§ 7. The Family.

In the nineteenth century, on the contrary, rough,
masculine customs again appear. A worship of woman
in theory, along with boorishness in practice, is the
characteristic of our time. Through the unnatural
lateness of marriages prostitution has become so exten-
sive, and flaunts itself with such impudence, that even
the tone of intercourse in society has been vitiated by
it. Thence the unfortunate idea of an emancipation
of women. If woman believes she is able to make an
impression upon us in daily intercourse by masculine
means, if she seeks to impress us by terrifying looks,
it has the opposite effect, and the social boorishness
arises that has gained so strong a hold at the present
time. There is no merit in being polite to a pretty
young girl, that is the natural impulse ; but the truly
refined man is recognized by his ability to be polite to
an old lady. And now look into any omnibus you
please and see how the men behave to old ladies !

In England family life has always been very healthy.
The Englishman shows great respect to women even

§7] THE FAMILY 57

formally ; the position of woman in society has every
liberty, without becoming undisciplined. Add to this
the aristocratic right of heredity, which, not of course
because of the law, but rather because of an entail
which recurs as a matter of custom, restricts the
inheritance almost entirely to the eldest son. Thus
rich heiresses are a rarity among the higher classes in
England, and most marriages are really marriages of
inclination ; and, as from such in the end the strongest
children, morally and physically, proceed, they are to
be looked upon as a blessing for State and society.
These are comparatively healthy conditions, only
spoiled recently by bluestockingdom and the doctrine
of emancipation.

Experiments have been made in Canada recently
with female suffrage, which can only be characterized
as flippancy. They were only attempted because people
said to themselves : " This is a stratagem, in order to
win the masses." In the exercise of this right by
women there are only two alternatives possible. Either
the wife or, it may be, the daughter votes as the
husband and father, and thereby an unwarranted
privilege is granted to married men — or wife and
daughter are good-for-nothings ; then they vote against
the man, and thus the State carries its dispute in

58 SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF STATE [bk. n

frivolous fashion right into the peace of the home, the
very place where we should rest from the noise of
political life.

§ 8. Races, Stocks, Nations.

We Germans are to-day in an unfortunate position.
The time . . . has come for the sub-German peoples to
begin to awake to self-assertion. That is justified to
a certain extent. It cannot be denied that the be-
haviour of Peter the Great towards the Russians was
violent. If one is Russian oneself, and considers that
somewhat higher than Germanism, the reaction that
has set in to-day is intelligible. Every nation is in
the habit of overrating itself. Without this self-
assertion a nation would lack public spirit as well.
Fichte says quite correctly : " A nation cannot possibly
keep from pride." That is true also of small nations ;
they are accustomed to exhibit the greater pride the
less merit they have to show. Germanism in the
Baltic provinces had protected itself by special local
privileges, as the Poles in Posen had their separate
rights. But the Germans in Livonia have never for-
feited their rights by rebellion, they have always been
the most loyal subjects possible ; the Czar has never
had such faithful subjects. Furthermore, these German

§8] EACES, STOCKS, NATIONS 59

Baltic provinces, intrinsically harmless for Czardom,
were invaluable for the culture of the Kussian empire.
The number of natives who have rendered important
service in the employment of the Eussian State, in the
army and the civil service, is simply legion. Eussia
had also a thousand grounds for sparing Germanism
there, especially because it did not cultivate propaganda
at all. Now she has taken from them their old aristo-
cratic constitution, and is trying to squeeze them down
by force into the democratic pap of despotic Eussia ;
for democratic despotism is the distinguishing mark of
the Eussian empire. This attempt to un-Germanize a
German country, which as a neighbouring country has
brought nothing but blessing to the Eussian State, is
undeniably barbarism. If these inhabitants of the
Baltic provinces had not happened to be Germans,
bearers of a higher culture ; if they had not deserved
so much of the State, we should have been obliged to
overlook the many ruthless steps of the Eussian execu-
tive power.

Then, however, the Jews cease to be necessary ; the
Aryans have themselves become accustomed to the
management of money. And now all that is dangerous
in this people becomes prominent, the decomposing
power of a nation which assumes the mask of different

60 SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF STATE [bk. ii

nationalities. If nations had self-knowledge, even
noble Jews would be obliged to confess that there is no
room left nowadays for the cosmopolitanism of Judaism;
we do not understand of what further use to the world
an international Judaism can be. Here we must speak
openly, undisturbed by the fact that the Jewish press
befouls what is pure historical truth. It can no longer
be disputed that Judaism can only play a part if its
members decide to become Germans, Frenchmen, or
Englishmen, and, with the reservation of old associa-
tions, become merged with the nation to which,
according to public law, they belong. That is the
perfectly moderate and just demand that we Westerners
have to make ; no nation can permit the Jews to have
a double nationality.

But the circumstances are so involved because we
have no sure standard by which to compare the Jews
who have become merged into the foreign nationality
with the others. Baptism alone does not do this.
There are unbaptized Jews who are good Germans — I
myself have known such Jews — and on the other hand
baptized Jews who are not ; legally, therefore, we are
in a difficult position. If the legislature wished to
treat the Jews simply as guests, permitting them to
exercise civil trades, but giving them, on the other
hand, no political or magisterial rights, that would be
an injustice, because this would not reach those we

§8] RACES, STOCKS, NATIONS 61

are aiming at. He who is baptized a Christian cannot
be looked upon as a Jew ; every legislature must
insist on that. So far I see absolutely only one means
that we can employ here : real energy of our national
pride, which must become a second nature with us, so
that we involuntarily reject everything that is strange
to the Germanic nature. That holds good of all and
sundry ; it holds good visiting of theatres and music-
halls as well as of newspaper-reading. Where there is
Jewish filth soiling our life the German must turn
away, and he must accustom himself to speak the
truth straight out. If we see an unclean anti-Semitism
springing up, the moderate parties are to blame for
that.

§ 9. Castes, Orders, Classes.

In judging of the historical position of the nobility
among the different nations of Europe we must pre-
serve an open mind in order not to admire foreign
institutions blindly. Thus the English nobility is
admired by our Conservatives ; and, considered in a
purely social light, it has indeed an excellent organiza-
tion. Only the eldest son of the family is considered
noble ; that helps to keep the nobility rich and take
away a certain odium from them. His distinguished

62 SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF STATE [bk. ii

social position has apparently in this case nothing that
offends, as the other sons sink back into the "commons."
When we hear it stated thus, it seems an excellent
organization ; the only question is whether we
Germans, with our different moral and social ideas,
can adopt it as it stands. Frederick William IV.,
it is true, attempted it ; after a few months, still in the
first year of his reign, he was obliged to withdraw the
decrees, because a widespread opinion protested against
them. The king's main idea was that the nobility should
consist of great landowners alone, and that only those
who inherited the land should belong to the nobility ;
but not the younger sons who had no land. With us
Germans, however, the family feeling is so strong that
we feel it to be an injustice if the younger son does
not occupy the same social position as the elder.
Against such views there is absolutely nothing to be
done. It is not true that one who has an estate would
be, in the eyes of our civilian society, so much more of
a gentleman than his brother who has none. At the
present time the respect for the ownership of land has
sunk much deeper, since so many obviously un-noble
elements have acquired great nobles' estates.

If we look more closely, it is clear that in Germany
also the bluest blood of the nobility is political in the

§9] CASTES, OKDERS, CLASSES 63

highest degree. In a certain sense we must say that
no country in the world has so illustrious a nobility as
we have. That the order of German princes is, pro-
perly speaking, only a high order of nobility, has been
evident since we have had an empire. This nobility
need fear no comparison. The lower order of nobility
is monarchic — that part of it which is worth anything.
That is why the Prussian nobility stands so high
morally ; these very Prussian Junkers of ill repute are
the best elements of the German nobility. Every one
who is at home in the small German States knows
that. In Prussia the Junkers have so long been
obliged to learn to be subjects that they find their
glory in the service of the Crown. They had first to
be humbled by the royal power, but after that they
accommodated themselves to circumstances. The
families of small nobles, on the contrary, in Saxony
and Bavaria have always had something of the
parasite about them ; they wish to rise by means of
the Court like the French Court-nobles.

If we look down into the lowest stratum of society,
which is designated nowadays the fourth order, we are
confronted by the remarkable phenomenon that these
great masses on the one hand contain the worst
elements of society — it cannot be otherwise; there must

64 SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF STATE [bk. n

be a lowest stratum in the life of every civilized people
which embraces everything that cannot keep itself
above it — and these same classes at the same time
carry within themselves the rejuvenating and vivifying
energies of all nationality. Every nation is rejuvenated
from below upwards ; such is the complicated inter-
change between the classes, that the outworn elements
sink from above downwards, while on the other side
the young and rejuvenating elements ascend from
below. No one knew that better than that glorious
man, whom narrow-minded Liberals always call an
aristocrat, Goethe. If real democracy consists in the
love of mankind, then Goethe is a democratic poet.
How truly has he said : " Those whom we call the
lowest class are certainly for God the highest class of
men." In these simple conditions of life there are
preserved among good men a simple strength and
purity of feeling, which are so easily lost among the
refined.

Long ago Aristotle described the position of this
class in the State with antique hardness of heart but
with essential correctness : " They are content if they
are permitted to occupy themselves with their own
affairs." Necessity and sweat in daily life are the
most real things for these masses who work with their
hands. They wish to be in a tolerable position
economically ; the ideal energies, of which they are

§9] CASTES, ORDERS, CLASSES 65

capable, exhibit themselves in two directions : in a
profound religious sentiment and on the other hand in
delight in military heroism. Who can picture to him-
self Jesus or Martin Luther otherwise than as the
children of poor parents ? Such religious geniuses only
arise in the lowest ranks of society. The aristocrat
must use violence upon his accustomed views of life
in order to come round to the view that we are all
God's children. But this feeling will exist very
strongly among more humble and upright people, if
their feelings are sound.

There lives, further, in the common man a healthy,
martial feeling of honour ; a delight in heroism lies in
his blood. If we seek for the truly national heroes of
history, the very highest fame, that unseals the lips
of tradition, has nearly always been apportioned to the
heroes of war and of religion. The statesman proper,
on the other hand, will never be popular. There is
only one exception to that rule and it is an apparent
one. It is Prince Bismarck. He, however, lives in
the memory of the people as a soldier hero, as the iron
man with the yellow collar of the Magdeburg cuiras-
siers ; the fancy of the great masses pictures Moltke
and Bismarck together as the men who had waged
the wars against Austria and France. On the other
hand, it is otherwise universally the case that heroes
of war and of religion are the really popular heroes ;

66 SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF STATE [bk. 11

and, when we know that, we understand how the dis-
contented masses are to be treated. The first thing is
the satisfaction of their domestic cares ; and then it
concerns us to work upon their oppressed minds with
the powers of the promise that only religion offers.
We must in every possible way promote and culti-
vate the manly courage and the religious sentiment,
which are powerful among the lower classes. There-
fore the national armies are a real blessing. To
no one is religion more indispensable than to the
common man. The unbelieving man of culture must
not actually repudiate the moral law, but the un-
refined man will lose all morality along with his
faith.

§ 10. Religion.

If we look at matters in this way, it is evident,
that the world of religious sentiment is so entirely
separated from the raw atmosphere of the life of the
State, that a full understanding can never supervene
here. Religious truths are truths of the mind, true as
nothing else is for the believing, but altogether non-
existent for the unbelieving. Childhood, which lives for
the future, and old age with its quiet contemplative-
ness are especially accessible to the promises of religion;

§ io] RELIGION 67

to the female mind, also, the profound unrest of an
existence without religion is unbearable. In the life
of the State, however, it is above all the men who
decide ; they are the rulers here. The State is
guided not by emotions, but by calculating, clear
experience of the world ; religion wishes to know only
what it believes, the State to believe only what it
knows. In the ecclesiastical community the subjec-
tive conviction of the believing conscience is, simply,
everything. The ideal of a religious fellowship is the
republic. Its constitution must be so framed, that
the changing conviction of the community may find
expression : thus in this case again the Evangelical
Church stands above the Catholic. It is the
other way about in the State. It is in the first
instance power ; and undoubtedly its ideal is the
monarchy, because in it the power of the State ex-
presses itself in an especially decided and consistent
way.

§11. The Education of the People.

It remains to be insisted upon, that the elementary
school must give what is positive, and that here all
education must rest upon a religious foundation. Thus
uniformity, not a blend, is undoubtedly the standard.

68 SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF STATE [bk. ii

It does not follow from this that undenominational
schools are to be rejected in every case. In the
Polish provinces they are necessary, in order to pro-
mote Germanism. We must make German education
supreme there; but a purely Catholic school means
in Poland and West Prussia a Polish school. He,
who will not see that, sacrifices great and real in-
terests of the German nation to love of an abstract
theory.

It will always remain an established fact that in-
struction in Latin and Greek cannot be replaced by
anything else whatever. The classical languages have
a wealth of German inflections, such as the modern
languages no longer possess ; English, so worn down is
it, has no longer any inflections of the noun. Another
advantage of those languages is that usage no longer
causes any changes in them. Here the rules are fixed,
and that is of great consequence in the case of the
undisciplined youthful mind ; it must abide by a fixed
rule laid down. Add the third advantage, that the
finest literature of all time arose in Greece, and that
the Latin language possesses a logical force such as no
other in the world does, to such a degree that, if we
wish to make ourselves particularly clear and plain,
we must construe our thoughts in a Latin form of

§11] EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE 69

speech. Then we cannot commit any more errors of
thought.

§ 12. Domestic Economy.

But, even from a purely theoretical point of view,
the idea is quite a mistaken one. Not uniformity, but
juxtaposition of large, average and small fortunes is
necessary for the health of a nation, for the develop-
ment in every direction of its material and moral
energies. Very small fortunes must be there; otherwise
the workers, whom we cannot do without for the satis-
faction of our physical needs, would not be found in
sufficient numbers. There must be middle classes ; in
them the real cream of the nation lies, they form the
principal foundation of the State. But even moderate
fortunes are not sufficient for the great system of
credit, and the huge industrial undertakings of our
time, which require large capitals in the hands of
individuals. For economical production large capitals,
when they are in the right hands, are every whit as
necessary as a working-class, which must work out of
necessity. We know, of course, that the conception
of necessity is fortunately a relative one, but it can
never die out.

These are unpopular truths at the present time, but

70 SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF STATE [bk. ei

we must constantly declare them anew, for it is estab-
lished that there can be no civilization without servants,
night-watchmen, etc. Whence follows of itself that
even theory must wish to place a part of mankind in
such a position that they consider the posts of servants
and night-watchmen desirable. He who has eyes to
see knows that it must remain so, and shall remain so,
for all futurity. All this talk of an equal division of
all property is therefore absurd from the first, because
men are alternately dying or being born every moment,
and because no standard could in any case ever be
found by which even an approximately equal division
of property could be carried out.

"What will occupy the State still more, however, in
the most immediate future is the too great power of
the large capital in its appalling degeneration. A
fortune such as the house of Rothschild possesses is in
every sense a public calamity. There can in this case
be no question of spending the interest; thus the capital
increases rapidly, and, what is still worse, these huge
fortunes are mostly cosmopolitan and contribute very
little to the increase of any nation's prosperity. The
slow draining of the national wealth by such immense
fortunes, the continuous accumulation of the money in
unworthy hands, which we can observe all around us

§12] DOMESTIC ECONOMY 71

at the present time : these are phenomena which
certainly open out a very gloomy vista into the future.
It is very easily conceivable that the State will one
day take steps against this unnatural increase of the
large capital.

BOOK III. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE

STATE

§ 13. The Forms of the State.

We to-day have a very rich experience of monarchies,
while Aristotle had only learned to know a few, and
some of these far from exemplary. We may therefore
say that he has not understood the monarchy, as the
Hellenes in general have not understood it. For that
reason they start from the belief that the essence of
the monarchy lies in the government of one man ; then
they come naturally to the further question : " How is
it that one man can be placed so high above all others ?"
and they arrive at the conclusion that the republic is
the more rational, for only a godlike being can be
exalted above all men. Aristotle speaks thus also.
Now, that is an entire misconception. We should
indeed be Byzantine flatterers if we tried to say that
our dynasty of kings was intrinsically superior to all
the other families in the country. The position of the
Hohenzollerns is not founded upon distinguished per-
sonal virtue or judiciousness, but their superiority

1 13] THE EOKMS OF THE STATE 73

consists in the mere fact that they are the kings, that
they stand upon their own right, and exercise a right
of sovereignty which is not disputed.

§ 14. The Theocracy.

The near future will, it is to be hoped, wipe out the
disgrace that such a dominion could ever establish
itself on European soil. For what has this Turkish
empire achieved in three full centuries ? It has only
destroyed. They have rushed in over the West like
a huge avalanche of rubbish, annihilating everything.
There is nothing left in Hungary from the hundred
and fifty years of their dominion but some mutilations
of Christian churches and the warm baths in Buda.
We know that it lies in the nature of Theocracy, that
it cannot develop beyond a fixed limit. How splendidly
did the civilization of the Omayyads flourish in Spain,
in Cordova and Granada ! At a certain point, how-
ever, it too began all at once to become torpid, so that
the ruder Christian stocks of the north, who, neverthe-
less, carried within themselves the Christian capacity
for development, gained the upper hand. The Turks
have not developed at all, they have always been, by
reason of their inborn hatred of thinking, a people of
soldiers, and indeed of great bravery, which we must

74 CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE [bk. w

admire. That is just the misfortune, that a people
that could only fulfil its mission as a horde of horsemen
has been brought into the enlightenment of the West.
What are the celebrated mosques but imitations of the
Hagia Sophia? The Turks have only copied that
Christian temple. Embroider slippers and cover marble
palaces with a kind of lace veil : these things they can
do ; and they understand perfectly, in especial, how to
decorate with ornaments the large halls of state, in
which the harem bathes; but real architecture they
lack completely. How crazily they have disfigured
the Hagia Sophia, that wonderful building in whose
regular forms one hears, as it were, the rhythm of the
proportions making music! And then, if we enter,
what a sight ! As Mecca lay in a south-south-easterly
direction, they have moved the prayer-niches away
from the centre a great distance to the right. And all
carpets, all church furniture, are now placed obliquely
and turned towards that corner : we have the impres-
sion that a crowd of drunk people has turned every-
thing upside-down. That is the way in which Orientals
meddle with the Christian world.

Still more ridiculous was the attempt to obtain an
entry into Turkey for the constitutional ideas of
Western Europe. The presupposition necessary for

§14] THE THEOCRACY 75

a constitutional State is absolutely lacking : a uniform
nation. The population does not consist of Ottomans,
but of a mixture of Mohamedans and Europeans.
Turkey is incorrigible, and she will remain so in spite
of all the much-lauded promises of freedom. We only
need to observe how outward form proceeds in such
cases. With what grotesque ceremonies was the
Hatti-sherif of Gulhan6 proclaimed in 1839! The
Grand Signior appears, and all those assembled throw
themselves on their bellies. Then the Court astrologer
steps forward with his astrolabe to see if Allah has
sent the favourable hour ; and as Allah has said, " It
is time," the reading of the great charter of freedom
begins. Such a State will remain what it was, and
since something of the old lion is to be observed even
yet, and since the army is constantly obtaining fresh
and seasoned strength from the Asiatic provinces, it
probably will remain until it is driven out of Europe
by force. Moltke, who, as is well known, was also in
Turkey as a Prussian captain, declared this so long as
fifty years ago. It is a system of the universe which
is strange to us, and which cannot be reformed accord-
ing to European ideas, but can only be overthrown.
The best picture of this people, which hates thinking,
but is experienced, because of long practice, in the art
of ruling, is furnished to us by the dogs of Constan-
tinople. They are brave, harmless animals ; they sleep

76 CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE [bk. m

during the day, and at night they perform the duty of
cleaning the streets without payment. But if we take
one of these dogs into our house and try to train him,
he dies out of longing for his accustomed freedom.
The Ottoman is like that. Under the tent in the
desert he was in his place ; that he strayed into the
restraint of civilization, is a dispensation that can
only end with his destruction.

§ 15. The Monarchy.

In contrast to the theocracy, the monarchy acknow-
ledges the secular nature of all executive power. Young
nations, it is true, are inclined to trace their kingship
back to some divine descent ; but the executive power,
once established, is always of a secular character. It
is even conscious of this itself and of its difference
from priesthood, and the " by the grace of God " is
only an expression of humility and piety. No mystic
spiritual power is meant by it, but it is to be recog-
nized in humility that it is an unsearchable dispensation
of Providence, if this particular family has raised itself
above all others in the country. The monarchy, of
course, has need of devoutness in a very especial
degree, for the idea that he stands so high above all
other men may actually unsettle the brain of the ruler,

§ 15] THE MONARCHY 77

unless he is filled with pious humility and recog-
nizes that his power is the dispensation of God,
and that he must submit himself to this dispensa-
tion. But all this does not invalidate the rule
that this executive power is secular and will be
secular. The truly monarchical State does not put
forward the claim to meddle with the handiwork of
the Godhead.

It lies, moreover, in the exalted position of the
monarch to see further than ordinary men. The
ordinary man surveys only a small circle of real life.
We can recognize this especially clearly in the involun-
tary class-prejudices of the average man. There are
prejudices of the middle classes and of the learned
professions, as well as those of the nobility ; they do
not see the whole of society, but only a small section.
On the contrary, it is clear that a monarch will learn
to know more of the aggregate of the national life
than the individual subject, and that he is in a position
to judge the relations of the different forces in society
more correctly than the average man can. This is
true above all in regard to foreign countries. The
king can judge much more clearly how things really
stand in the world without than the individual subject
or even a republican party-government. A policy

78 CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE [bk. rn

reckoning far into the future will only be possible foi
him who really stands at the centre.

. . . Generally speaking, we must call a fixed heredi-
tary succession a conditio sine qua non of the monarchic
form of the State. Add to this that we see certain
peculiarities of character to be hereditary in reigning
families. It is, of course, not a peculiarity of monarchic
families alone to remain like themselves through the
centuries ; it is the case everywhere. On the whole,
we may say of the Hohenzollerns, a gifted race, showing
strong individual diversities, that they have neverthe-
less been, with few exceptions, simple natures. What
a plain, homely understanding, always seeing what lies
near at hand, does Frederick the Great display, in
spite of all his genius ! Certain views become, by
reason of a long historical experience, the habit of a
ruling family : think of the efforts of the Hohenzollerns
to form the Union. Originally it was merely a make-
shift, in order to secure themselves. Through his going
over to the Keformed faith the monarch with his house
had joined the small minority ; he had therefore to try
to find a meeting-ground in some form or other.

Undoubtedly, there also lies in this continuity of
family inheritance the danger of monotony and tor-
pidity. There exist such unintellectual reigning families

§15] THE MONARCHY 79

that, as in the case of the English Georges, we can
hardly distinguish one king from the other. Or look
at the portraits of the Hapsburg rulers : everywhere
the same touch of spiritual dulness in the faces ; they
have all been parson-kings. The house of Holstein is
also remarkable in all its branches. The Oldenburg
Holsteiners can only be distinguished by the fact that
the lower Frederick always follows the higher Christian.
The fourth Christian alone was able to unseal the lips
of the Muse; and lives on in the lasting remembrance
of his people. It is he of whom the national anthem
sings : " King Christian stood by the lofty mast."
Nevertheless, the dynasty was loved in all its genera-
tions. They had nothing objectionable in all their
uniform mediocrity.

This danger of torpidity would be still greater for the
monarchy if human nature did not here, as everywhere,
work against it. The natural opposition between the
younger and older generations, which is found in all
ranks of society, shows itself particularly strong in
these high places. There is no human calling which
could be more exposed to the most subtle moral temp-
tations than that of the heir to the throne in a great
empire. It is an old experience that those very
monarchs who are true to their duty, and powerful,
have a great jealousy of their successors : they do not
wish to let him who comes after them have a peep

80 CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE [a* in

into the kitchen. The Crown Prince was always
shoved gently aside by the Emperor William I. Being
so highly placed, and as a rule quite without influence,
the heir is provoked to criticism, which expresses itself
now in evil, now in nobler forms. Never yet in the
case of the Hohenzollerns has a father been of like
mind with his son. That is the corrective which
Nature applies in this instance, fortunately for us,
against the danger of one-sided torpidity. Therefore,
monarchies have never degenerated into so great a
monotony as theocratic States. The personality of
the ruler in its individuality has always made itself
felt anew as a rejuvenating influence.

... Of monarchies it holds good in the highest degree
that kings may themselves become their own worst
enemies. For in the fact that a single man is placed
so high above all mortals there lies an immense temp-
tation to arrogance of all kinds ; there is an imminent
danger that the personality of the king of the moment,
with his caprices and his human limitations, may be
confounded with the crown itself, and that thus a self-
deification may arise which will have a demoralizing
effect. If everything that passes through the mind
of such a prince must forthwith become law, the
monarchy becomes a caricature and an agitation begins

§15] THE MONAECHY 81

among all noble, free spirits ; and such monarchs must
then rely upon their enemies, for their friends forsake
them. On the other hand, in this event also it very
often does not matter what the monarch is in reality,
but what he appears to be to his people. When I
consider what changes have come about in impres-
sions of monarchs in my lifetime alone ! Frederick
William IV. was as much overrated in the first period
of his reign as his great brother was underrated.

If, on the contrary, the king is profoundly imbued
with the consciousness of his exalted duty, then it is
glorious to see how the high office educates its holder.
What examples of such kingly men Prussia possesses in
Frederick II. and King William ! Let us follow the
life of Frederick, who at his latter end was the greatest
of all the monarchs of the earth. At first he was still
an excitable half-poet, full of poetical whims and
fancies, always with a tinge of sentimentalism ; on the
same day he gives the order for the inroad into Silesia
and celebrates in an ode the quiet peace of country
life. And then how all at once the hero in him breaks
through, and thereafter with the course of years his
kingly sense becomes ever stronger ! In his old age
he lives and moves entirely in the thought of his
States ; all personal likes and dislikes disappear before

82 CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE [bk. hi

that. In his last period he becomes, as it were,
impersonal ; he now thinks only of exercising the justice
of the king. That is the process of development of a
monarch of a grand type. In Emperor William the
like is to be observed. And the evening of his life was
more cheerful than that of his great predecessor. In
his last years he appears already as if transfigured.
What did he still wish and strive for for himself ?
Nothing whatever; he became quite identified with
the idea of his political calling.

Where the crown is in tolerable hands, especially
in the hands of thoroughly modest natures, even when
they are moderately gifted, their natural inherent
strength will be shown in this respect also, that there
will exist an especially good understanding between
the army and the king. In the army, above all,
every one desires a final, supreme, unconditioned will,
and, as the king stands above all social oppositions,
he is also especially well fitted to realize in practice
the idea of the power of the State by means of his
leadership of the army. The king is the born leader
of the army ; and, if he is also that in reality, every
one has the feeling that the monarchy confronts us in
its finest bloom and maturity. The organization of
the army is undoubtedly an easier task for the

§15] THE MONAECHY 83

monarchy than for the republic. It is easier to take the
oath of allegiance to a visible head of the army than
to an abstraction. Moreover, the king can use this
terrible weapon, the army, without any internal danger
to the State. In republics, on the contrary, the
danger is always threatening, that a victorious general
may misuse the army for selfish political aims. Even
in Washington's army there were attempts of this
kind. In the France of to-day things are quite plain
in this respect. The conqueror of Germany would at
once be made emperor of France. Therefore the
republic must often have recourse to artificial means ;
Venice in her later period had always foreign
condottieri.

§ 16. The Older Forms of the Monarchy.

. . . Present-day Eussia has shown us that in that
State sheer madness is still possible. Such a suicidal
act as the uprooting of Germanism in the Baltic
provinces has seldom been seen in the history of the
world. These Germans were only too faithful. "What
a part they have played in Eussian history ! Almost
one out of three of the famous statesmen or generals
of Eussia has been a native of the Baltic provinces.
Besides, there are the ethnographical conditions. The

84 CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE [bk. hi

Baltic provinces are not German at all, they have only
a thin crust of German patricians and noblemen above
the mass of Lithuano-Finnish original inhabitants.
Thus in their case a revolt of the Germans was not to
be thought of. And these faithful provinces, to which
Eussia owes so much, were ill-treated and mutilated
with a barbarity without parallel. The complete
expulsion of the Germans from Russia is indeed
unthinkable, for then the work of the State would not
proceed ; Russia has not enough capable Muscovites.
And yet there is this raging hatred of the Germans.
After a new change of government we shall perhaps
experience a reversion to the European. But in such
a spasmodic for and against a great State can hardly
proceed permanently.

The recipe of the German liberals for all abuses is
of course a transition to constitutional forms of the
State. Whether it will come to this some day, who
can prophesy ? But a constitution would be, to begin
with, a very doubtful benefit. Russia requires social
reforms before everything else. Serfdom must be quite
abolished, so that the peasant may acquire property ;
the wretched system of national education must be
reformed from top to bottom. Now, if the question
be asked : " Who are the natural enemies of these
reforms ? " then the answer is : " The great land-
owners." But a Parliament in Russia can only be

§16] OLDEE FORMS OF THE MONAECHY 85

composed of great landowners and some representa-
tives of the cities ; it would thus be reactionary in the
very worst sense, and would only restrain Czardom.
On the other hand, educated Eussians had the feeling
that they lacked a constitution so early as the period
from 1815 to 1830, when the grand-duchy of Warsaw
rejoiced in its constitution, and likewise later, when
the small Balkan States, which Eussia had helped
to separate from Turkey, all created for themselves
the most delightful national representation possible.
Every State had to have its Skupshtina. They shoot
and thrash one another there; nevertheless it is
proved within a small compass, that parliamentary
forms can be realized even among Slavs and Wallachs.
Thus many momenta may by pressure bring about
the venturing of the experiment one day in Eussia,
although success is so doubtful. But we must not
underestimate the immense vital energy of the Eussian
empire even in its present condition. A capacity for
assimilation of the very highest grade is a universal
characteristic of history with which we must reckon.
If ever any State had, then Eussia has what the
Americans call a great destiny. Its civilizing mission
in Asia is unmistakable, and there it has huge tasks
still to accomplish. The danger to Europe lies in the
fact that the State is filled, because of its successes in
Asia, with a consciousness of victory, which it has not

86 CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE [be. hi

earned at all. Its frontiers to the west are of such a
kind that it cannot be attacked there. There has
therefore developed among the Eussians a megalo-
mania, which wishes to appear on the scene in the
west also, as conqueror and ruler. The fancy of a
Eussian lieutenant of the guard does not stick at a
little military promenade, taking one part of the army
to the Hindus and the other over Berlin and Vienna
to Constantinople.

In Asia the Eussians are as a Caucasian people,
which, however, still lives at the same time under half-
oriental forms of the State, the true bearers of civiliza-
tion ; in Europe, on the contrary, Russia's example
teaches us as clearly as day, that a return to pure
absolutism is no longer possible in any country.

§ 1 7. The Constitutional Monarchy.

If we sum up all these English conditions, then we
understand how Montesquieu could declare that the
ruling spirit of a constitutional monarchy must be mis-
trust ; that terrible doctrine which would base a noble
form of the State upon one of the most hateful
impulses of man. But it is still at this day a dogma
of all radical parties, even if they do not dare to
announce it in plain words. And even my dear

§ 17] THE CONSTITUTIONAL MONAKCHY 87

teacher Dahlmann said that political freedom in consti-
tutional States had perhaps less to fear from mediocre
monarchs on the throne than from the genius of great
men. Thus could a noble, intelligent man speak, as if
genius, which is ever a blessing from Heaven, must
become a public danger.

Yet it is quite evident that we cannot wish, even if
it happened to be possible, to transfer to other States
without more ado a kingship ossified by peculiar
historical circumstances, such as this English one.
Healthy human reason tells us that these political
institutions are the best, which achieve most in the
most capable hands. He who maintains, therefore,
that a kingship must be so arranged that it can bear
mediocrities best, is talking out of topsy-turvydom.
The whole education of English princes is, of course,
directed towards the object, which it has attained with
wonderful success, that the hereditary nullity of the
house of Guelph should be perpetuated. None of
those who can hope for the throne is a soldier in the
full sense of the word. And things are already so
arranged that we, without being prophets, can say in
advance that the Guelph hereditary characteristics will
continue in the next two generations of the house of
Coburg. They belong to the nature of the English
State ; but we Germans do not wish to depart from
simple human intelligence, and do not wish to propose

88 CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE [bk. m

to our nation that they should have a healthy leg cut
off and exchange it for a wonderfully executed artificial
one. We have made the trial : our constitutional
monarchy is of such a nature that it achieves the most
under great monarchs. The constitutional monarchy
is not intended to rob the kingship of all significance ;
it must rather keep it fresh and living even among a
politically mature people. With us the kingship is
almost the only force of political tradition which
unites our present with the past: shall we wish for
ourselves English Georges instead of our famous house
of Hohenzollern ? We have such a proud monarchic
history that a Prussian may well say : " The best
monarch is just good enough for us." According to
our constitution, the monarch alone is vested with the
power of the State ; and he who maintains the con-
trary must prove what he maintains against our
constitution on the basis of alien and peculiar condi-
tions which have become historical.

We have, of course, adopted many inessential trifles
from England. Thus with us also the name of the
king must not be mentioned in Parliament. The
English — they have always been great in such kinds of
flattery — declared that the name of the king should no
more be taken in vain than the name of God. The will

§ 17] THE CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY 89

of this Guelph royalty, whose first representative did
not understand his country's language, and thus could
not preside at any council of ministers, is no longer
of any account; it matters not at all what Queen
Victoria thinks about a political question. And that is to
be a model for our country, where the king understands
German very well ! In Germany the will of the king
still means something very real. That is true above
all of Prussia, which alone has still a real monarch,
who is also entirely independent of any higher power.
Here a minister must not, in presence of Parliament,
hide himself like a coward behind the monarch ; but, if
in a given case he declares : " Don't decide that, gentle-
men ; I tell you beforehand we cannot carry it with
his Majesty " ; if a minister says that, it is impossible
to see why he ought not to have said it.

§ 18. Tyranny and Ccesarism.

A nation which takes so cowardly a view of the
world is ripe for despotism. The reproach of passion
for novelty, which we like to make against the French,
is, if we look more closely, little justified politically.
In France things have not altered these last hundred
years so much as with us in Germany ; the revolutions
always affected the heads of the State alone. He who

90 CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE [bk. in

examines impartially, and does not allow himself to be
deceived by phrases, must say that that country makes
the most harmonious impression, as regards healthy
State-development, under the first and third Napoleons.
Nothing is said against Bonapartism with moral catch-
words. It, and not the present state of the bureau-
cratic republic, corresponds undeniably in France to
the laws of political logic. The form of the State in
that country is still based upon the institutions of the
First Consul. The whole sub-structure of the State,
the fixed, centralized hierarchy of a thoroughly despotic
officialdom, which takes from the subjects all trouble
of self-administration, and permits them only to criticize
and pay taxes, and at the worst to help themselves by
a revolution : this constitution requires also a despot
at the head of it. The republic has only lasted because
a new Bonaparte who shall beat the Germans, has not
yet been found.

§ 19. TJie Aristocratic Republic.

There is a strong quality of energy, of majesty, in
the whole Venetian organization. The king-craft of
that city is unique, the wonderful gifts, the penetrating
knowledge of mankind of her ambassadors ; but equally
unmistakable is a quality of contempt for mankind,

§19] THE ARISTOCRATIC REPUBLIC 91

especially for all men of talent who had no blue blood
in their veins. That was the real canker of that
aristocratic republic, that it did not, like Rome, reserve
to itself the possibility of admitting homines novi into
the ruling order. In earlier times capable energies
had been assimilated from outside ; a whole series of
Venetian families was originally Dalmatian. This
shrewdness was quite neglected later ; in the end
Venice came to ruin through the caste-like isolation
of the ever decreasing order of rulers, the intermarry-
ing and the physical and moral degeneration which
resulted therefrom. How low they fell, these illus-
trious houses ! A typical representative of the utterly
degenerate nobility is the last doge Manin. What a
pitiful part he played when Bonaparte came in 1797
to overturn the old Queen of the Adriatic with
what was nothing more nor less than a kick ! That
was the ignominious fall of a State that had
once ruled the whole East. Then, when in 1848
great historical reminiscences flared up once more,
when the republic of San Marco came to life again for
a short time, it seemed a crowning insult of Fate, that
a Manin again appeared at its head. But he sprang
from one of the small Jew families of Venice. Each of
the old noble houses had a following of little families
of clients about it, who also frequently adopted the
name of the ruling family. From such a family

92 CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE [bk. hi

sprang the great democrat, Daniele Manin, whose
defence of Venice against the Austrians is among the
most exalted feats of our century.

§ 20. The Democratic Republic.

As the theocracy is the drowsiest, the monarchy the
most many-sided, the aristocracy the most methodical,
so is the democracy the most generally intelligible and
most popular among the forms of the State. The
fundamental principle on which it is based is the idea
of the natural equality of everything that bears a
human visage ; this idea has something exalted about
it, and it is very easy to understand why it has so
often had an intoxicating effect. We know well that
it is only half true, and never entirely to be realized,
but it is deeply rooted in human nature. That the
idea of inequality is equally true, that we are all,
indeed, equal as men, but unequal as individuals, the
ordinary view of things cannot recognize. The
ordinary human intelligence speaks of equality alone.
At a certain stage of the civilization of the people,
therefore, democracy can have an effect in promoting
culture; it is, if at all well administered, the most
popular form of the State, and, in countries where it
prevails, is looked upon as so self-evident that other

§20] THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC 93

forms are considered to be nonsensical or gross tyranny.
However different the character it may assume accord-
ing to social conditions, it always retains the principal
quality, that its ideal is the Sri/mos fiovapyos. The people
must really be the sole ruler, and the object is in such a
manner to extend the rights of the people that ultimately
general equality shall exist, at least upon paper.

Artificial democracies are relatively more frequent
than artificial monarchies and aristocracies. A nobility
cannot be made, if it is not there already ; as little
can a dynasty be created at will ; on the contrary, it
is quite possible, by means of an over-hasty revolution,
to introduce democratic forms even where they have
no natural foundation, because of the customs of the
country, or because of the great inequalities of social
conditions. And these democratic forms may then
persist, because they are very elastic, and because an
aristocratic element can easily accommodate itself to
them. It is so even yet in Bern. Or look at present-
day France : under a purely democratic constitution
there is what is in point of fact a complete plutocracy ;
the oligarchic power of a few great banking houses,
which tacitly make use of the democratic forms, in
order to exploit them for their own objects.

94 CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE [bk. m

... In democracies, on the contrary, a rigid deno-
minationalism is the rule, and for domestic life in
North America this denominational narrow-mindedness
is in fact a real blessing. Here the Sabbath in its
ghastly form is really nt \ry. To our German
sentiment nothing is more horrible than such a day of
rest, of complete inactivity, every week. We incline
to the opposite fault, to a Sunday of dissipation ; a
stricter celebration of the Sunday can do no harm in
Germany. But God preserve us from the English-
American Sabbath ! One must have completely ex-
hausted oneself in every muscle and nerve for the past
six days, in order to feel that this absolute laziness on
the seventh day is a release. The severe and rigid, alto-
gether narrow-minded ecclesiasticism of the Americans,
which is so repulsive to us more liberal Germans, is
thus shown to be a practical necessity. We come to
recognize that democracy must in any case rest upon
the foundation of a very strong religious morality, if it
is not to get quite out of control.

§ 21. Confederacy of States and Federal State.

We have to-day on the Scandinavian peninsula the
same relations as those between Belgium and Holland
after 1815. The political connection of these two

§21] CONFEDERACY OF STATES 95

peoples also looked wonderfully well on the map, and
was yet in reality intolerable. Similarly to-day with
the union between Sweden and Norway. Norway
democratizes in the most repulsive way ; it is a people
of peasants, where every churl is a churl, each as coarse
and clownish as the other, and then on the top, with
this rude peasantry as a foundation, an immense refine-
ment of city life. Then very naturally there arises an
over-refined, decadent literature ; such spirits as Ibsen
are intelligible on this soil. Look at Sweden, on the
other hand, with her recollections of the days when she
was a Great Power; the good Swedish soldiers even
to-day, and in Christiania the ludicrous figures with
their bersagliere-h&ts, who are called soldiers also —
the sharp contrast is everywhere as clear as noonday.
In spite of this, however, we find in Norway a capacity
for the conduct of trade which deserves admiration ;
Norway has a larger mercantile fleet than Germany.
Of course the configuration of the coast is such that
intercourse between different places in that country
can only be carried on by ship. In contrast to this,
Sweden's industries have achieved little so far. The
Norwegian is at the present time filled with a pro-
found, democratic, peasant's hatred of Sweden, and
everything seems to indicate that the attempt to
separate the two kingdoms will be made.

96 CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE [bk. m

§22. The Empire.

... He who judges impartially must say that, since
the Great Elector, the political history of Germany is
entirely contained in Prussia. Every clod of land
which was lost through the fault of the old Empire,
and was won back again, was acquired by means of
Prussia. In that State lay thenceforth the political
energies of the German nation just as certainly as she
did not contain in her for a long time its ideal energies,
in fact almost thrust them from her. The new
Germany, after the confusion of the War of Liberation,
was at first only a loose juxtaposition of the small
monarchic States, which in that immense fluctuation
had remained alone upon the battle-field. And the
creative work of the Prussian State begins anew. All
the politically real content of the history of the league
was enacted in Prussia. On Prussian soil that arming
of the nation began which was later to become the lot
of all Germany ; through it the eight provinces of Prussia
grew simultaneously into one whole. The proof was
given by the facts that an executive power which was
in a position to unite Trier and Tilsit in internal
peace, would also have the power to unite and to
protect all Germany. And soon the Prussian Customs-
Union began to trace out the real frontiers of Germany

§22] THE EMPIRE 97

as opposed to the real foreign countries. The black-
and-yellow boundary-posts with the nefarious double-
eagle remained outside. It had been our misfortune
through many centuries, that no one knew where
Germany stopped. The time was now to come at last
in which the single-headed eagle of the old emperor,
which the eastern march of Prussia alone had kept for
itself, won its victories over the double-eagle which
had so deeply injured and insulted us.

For the improvement of centralization a real capital
would also be very necessary to the empire, while the
federal republics, as we have seen, exhibit the opposite
of such a need. Although the Berliner is the most
unbearable person in all Germany, yet Berlin is bound
to become much greater yet, must attract to itself
much more of the nation's energies. Before 1866
there were very many worthy German patriots who
with thorough earnestness wished German unity, but,
from an intelligible ill-will against Berlin, wished
Brunswick or Hildesheim or Nuremberg for the capital.
These are aberrations which are no longer understood
at the present day, but they had at that time gained a
very firm footing. This capital of the Jewish news-
paper-press will, of course, never be able to become

the centre of German national life. Add to this, that

7

98 CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE [bk. m, § 22

Berlin is also too unaesthetic to become the centre of
the noblest civilizing activities of the German people.
A true artist cannot live here. How one can be a
poet and conceive the idea of living in Berlin has
always been incomprehensible to me. It will always
be the case that towns like Munich and Dresden will
offer more stimulus for artistic souls than Berlin can
ever give. On that account also the empire, fortu-
nately, on the whole, for art itself, has left the care of
artistic matters to the individual States, showing in
this case a justified particularism.

For the rest, however, it is evident, that the city
which is once recognized as the capital must be as
rich in spiritual energies as is possible at all. It was
a grave error of federalist policy, which can now, alas,
no longer be retrieved, to remove the supreme court
of the empire to Leipzig. Every member of the
supreme court feels as if he were a fish out of water.
In all really united States the seat of the highest court
has always been the capital. And for the life of com-
merce, also, an even greater centralization in Berlin is
unavoidable. It is, indeed, very evident what a power
of attraction the Imperial Bank and the other Berlin
banks have exercised. And this must remain so. If
Germany is to become a real monarchy, the capital of
its emperor must also become the capital of the nation ;
this centralization lies in the nature of things.

BOOK IV. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE

STATE

§ 23. The Organization of the Army.

Even he who looks upon the army as an evil must
consider it in any case as a necessary evil. If the
State itself is necessary and rational, it follows that it
must maintain itself as against other States. We shall
see, however, in addition, that an efficient and powerful
equipment of the army is also the basis of political
freedom, that consequently the States are by no means
to be commiserated that have a powerful, well-organized
army. In this very domain theory removed from actual
life has constantly suffered ludicrous defeats from the
power of facts. Every one who calls himself liberal-
minded talks of the ideal belief that the States were
hastening towards universal disarmament. But what
does the history of our century teach ? The very
opposite ; armament becomes ever stronger and heavier,
and this phenomenon is exhibited in every State with-
out exception, and cannot therefore rest upon an
accident. The fact is, a radical error lies in this whole

100 ADMINISTBATION OF THE STATE [be. iv

liberal conception. The State is no Academy of
Arts, still less a Stock Exchange ; it is power, and
therefore it contradicts its own nature if it neglects
the army.

In this case also the very peculiar circumstances
of England have had a misleading effect upon the
theories of the Continent. England is in military
respects in a very abnormal position. She can con-
fine herself to her fleet as her national weapon, and
only requires to give secondary consideration to the
army, since she has learned to renounce conquests on
the Continent. The godly dragoons of Oliver Crom-
well were the most glorious and best army that
England has ever possessed, an army worthy of admira-
tion as regards technical skill and moral discipline,
but these troops belonged to a religious sect, and only
represented a part of the nation. England was forced
by means of it into a regime which suited only that
one republican party. The country, however, was at
that time still monarchically inclined, as the Kestora-
tion shortly afterwards showed. The opinions of the
English regarding the army spring from those experi-
ences of Puritan rule. At that time the old liberties
of the country were enslaved and trodden upon by a
continued state of martial law ; England lay at the
feet of the army. Cromwell could not govern the
country otherwise than through his major-generals;

§23] ORGANIZATION OF THE ARMY 101

the first business of the Restoration was the disband-
ing of these godly regiments.

Since then there has been a fixed opinion in England
that the army was a tool of the State, which could be
used even against the will of the nation ; and then,
when a second revolution set up a mock royalty by the
grace of Parliament, the Mutiny Act was introduced
under William III. It runs something like this :
" Whereas the condition of a standing army is against
the law of this country, but as, in consideration of the
preservation of the balance of power in Europe and in
order to keep the Colonies in order, it is expedient to
call out so many thousand men, the Crown is hereby
empowered to call out this number, and the soldiers
are under the Mutiny Act placed outside of civil law."
You see at once the ludicrous contrast to Germany.
With us the institution of the army is really a conse-
quence of the laws. The Defence Act of 1814, one
of the grandest memories of Prussia, forms the
foundation of a comprehensive legislation. With us
the army is thus placed upon a legal foundation, and
is not, as in England, an anomaly.

Eor it is an advantage to a nation when it has a
strong and well-organized army, not only because the
army is intended to serve as an instrument for foreign

102 ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE [bk. iv

policy, but because a noble nation with a glorious his-
tory can employ the army for a very long time as a
dormant weapon, and because it forms a school for
the peculiarly manly virtues of the people, which so
easily become lost in an age of profit and enjoyment.
Of course, we must admit that there are finely-strung,
refined, artistic natures that cannot endure military
discipline. A perverted view of universal military
service often emanates from such people. In these
great matters, however, we must not judge according
to exceptional natures, but according to the old rule :
"Mens sana in corpore sano." This bodily strength is
in times like ours especially significant. It is a defect
of English civilization that it does not know universal
military service. This defect is to some extent
remedied by the fact that the fleet is so powerfully
developed, and, on the other hand, the continual petty
warfare in its numberless colonies employs and keeps
fresh the manly energies of the nation. That a great
bodily robustness is still to be found in England is
partly connected with this constant fighting in the
colonies. But if we look more attentively, a great
defect is disclosed. The lack of chivalry in the
English character, which contrasts so strikingly with
the naive loyalty of the Germans, is connected with
the fact that in that country men do not seek bodily
exercise in the use of the noble weapons, but in the

§23] ORGANIZATION OF THE AKMY 103

accomplishments of boxing, swimming and rowing.
Certainly these exercises have their value, but it is
obvious that this whole class of athletic sports breeds
the athletic spirit, with its coarseness, and a superficial
mind, whose sole endeavour is always to win the first
prize.

It remains the normal and rational course when a
great nation embodies and develops in an organized
army the nature of the State, which is precisely power,
by means of its physical strength. And, as we have
lived in a warlike age, the over-nice, philanthropic way
of looking at these things has retreated more into the
background, so that, with Clausewitz, we again look
upon war as the forcible continuation of policy. All
the pipe-of-peace-smokers in the world will not bring
matters so far that the political powers will at any
time be of one mind, and, if they are not, the sword
alone can decide between them. We have learned to
know the moral majesty of war in the very thing that
appears brutal and inhuman to superficial observers.
That one must overcome the natural feelings of
humanity for the sake of the fatherland, that in this
case men murder one another who have never harmed
one another before and who perhaps esteem one another
highly as chivalrous enemies, that is at the first glance
the awfulness of war, but at the same time its great-
ness also. :- A man must sacrifice not only his life, but

104 ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE [bk. iv

also natural, profoundly justified feelings of the human
soul ; he must yield up his whole ego to a great
patriotic idea : that is the moral exaltedness of war.
If we pursue this thought further we recognize that
war, with all its sternness and roughness, also weaves
a bond of love between men, since here all class-dis-
tinctions vanish, and the risk of death knits man to
man. He who knows history knows also that it would
positively be a mutilation of human nature if we tried
to banish war out of the world. There is no freedom
without warlike strength which is ready to sacrifice
itself for freedom. It must be repeated again and again
that scholars, when they consider these things, proceed
from the tacit assumption that the State is only
destined to be an Academy of Arts and Sciences. It
must be that too, but that is not its first mission. If
a State neglects its physical energies in favour of its
spiritual, then it goes to the wall.

If the army is the organized political strength of
the State, then that organization can only be power
and have no will of its own, for it is intended to
execute the will of the head of the State in uncondi-
tional obedience. This subjection of its own will to
that of the head of the State is a very stern require-
ment; that must not be denied. But it is obvious,

§ 23] OEGANIZATION OF THE AEMY 105

that the political freedom of a people rests upon this
very demand, which all radical talkers decry as
reactionary. If the army had a will of its own, all
political security would cease. There is no more
terrible plague conceivable than an army that debates
and splits itself into parties ; the fate of Spain is in
this connection a deterrent example. How much that
country suffered under the army, which had always a
will of its own and took the side, now of Carlos, now
of the virtuous Isabella ! Only the unconditioned
severity of military discipline is a protection against
such political dangers.

In this energy and firmness of obedience lies the
honour of the soldier. Therefore the unconditional
obedience, which is with us developed almost to stern-
ness, is a glory and a sign of the efficiency of our
army organization. The contempt, with which among
radicals this dog-like obedience is so often spoken of,
proves itself to be pure illusion. The training in the
army is especially suited just for the building-up of
character. Old, efficient officers have, above all, well-
moulded characters, and in this respect are often to be
placed higher than the average scholar, for scholars
have much less opportunity of forming their characters.
Goethe's immortal saying in his " Tasso " expressed the

106 ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE [be. iv

truth in this connection. Silent obedience to superiors,
and at the same time strict discipline with inferiors
demand an independence of character which is very
highly to be appraised. Our Prussian generals have
never been anything else than liberal-minded men.

The example of the German national army has had
an irresistible effect upon the rest of Europe. Every-
thing that was formerly said in mockery of it has
proved itself fallacious. It was the rule abroad to
look down with shrugging of the shoulders upon the
Prussian Landwehrs and the Prussian children's army.
How differently have things turned out ! It has been
plainly shown that in war the moral factors have
more weight than technical training ; and it has been
shown further that a moral deterioration goes hand in
hand with the increasing technical experience of the
barracks. Tne old sergeants of France were not in the
least superior, as the French expected, to the German
troops. We may declare that the problem of training
in arms and turning to real account the energies of
the nation was first undertaken in thorough earnestness
by Germany. We possess in our army a characteristic,
necessary continuation of the school-system. For
many men there is no better means of training ; for
them drilling, compulsory cleanliness and severe dis-

§23] ORGANIZATION OF THE ARMY 107

cipline are physically and morally indispensable in a
time like ours, which unchains all spirits. Carlyle
prophesied that the Prussian idea of universal liability
of service would make the round of the world. Since
in 1866 and 1870 the Prussian army-organization
stood its trial so brilliantly, almost all the other great
States of the Continent have tried to imitate it.

In all these organizings of the army we were until
lately the leaders of the other nations. Only recently
has the over-straining of military strength in the
neighbouring States become so great that Germany
sees herself compelled likewise, and this time in imita-
tion of the foreign countries, to go still further. There
is a last limit provided by the nature of things, and
here the immense physical strength of the Germanic
race will itself look to it, that we always retain a
considerable advantage over the less prolific nations.
The French have come close to their extreme limit ; the
Germans have in this respect a much greater margin.

You must realize clearly once more how these new
formations of the army affect the waging of war. On
the whole the tendency of the system is a peaceful
one. A whole nation in arms is dragged out of its
social employments into a frivolous war with much
more difficulty than a conscript army. Wars become

108 ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE [bk. iv

fewer and shorter, but at the same time also bloodier.
The desire to get home again will give a strong im-
pulse forwards. The frame of mind of the Prussian
soldiers in the summer of 1866, which expressed itself
in the wish : " Let us push on quickly to the Danube,
so that we can get home soon again," is to be looked
upon as the normal wish of a brave and at the same
time peacefully inclined national army. That bold
method of making war, which seeks as a matter of
principle to thrust into the enemy's heart, is nowadays
taken as self-evident. We may say that with such a
national army, when the nation looks back upon a
glorious history, nothing is really impossible ; the
experiences of our two last wars, especially the battles
of Koniggratz and Mars-la-Tour, have proved that.
We saw in the battle of Sadowa that fourteen Prussian
battalions held their ground against perhaps forty-two
Austrian, and the French war showed us a whole series
of decisive battles fought with reversed front, the loss
of which would have driven us back into the heart of
the enemy's country. The task of sparing an army
recedes quite into the background, in the case of a
modern national army, as compared with the greater and
more peremptory task of destroying the enemy. The
danger of desertion does not come into consideration
here at all ; the army can be quartered everywhere.

§23] ORGANIZATION OF THE ARMY 109

I shall in conclusion only point out shortly that the
fleet is beginning to-day to gain increased importance,
not specially for European war — no one believes any
longer that a fight between Great Powers can be
decided nowadays by naval battles — but rather for the
protection of trade and of colonies. The domination
of the transatlantic countries will be now the first task
of European battle-fleets. For, as the aim of human
culture will be the aristocracy of the white race over
the whole earth, the importance of a nation will ulti-
mately depend upon what share it has in the
domination of the transatlantic world. Therefore the
importance of the fleet has again grown greater in our
days.

§ 24. The Administration of the Law.

Finally, the necessity is clear that the administration
of the law should be accessible to all, not only in
name, but also in deed. In this respect England
stands as far behind the Continent as it has out-
stripped us in other respects. A lawsuit in England
is so dear that it is only possible for the rich man.
The small farmer cannot raise an action against his
superior, because the costs are beyond his means. In
this aristocratic distortion of life lies a fundamental

110 ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE [bk. iv

fault of the English State-organization. For it is
obvious that such a state of affairs is a radical error,
that the State must intervene with its means, in order
to make it possible for the poor man to carry on a
lawsuit. Where the administration of the law is not
approximately accessible to all, its effectiveness cannot
be sound.

As in all human affairs, there must also be in every
system of punishment a last limit, a ne plus ultra that
no punishment can overstep. Thus even from the point
of view of pure theory the necessity of the death-
penalty is postulated ; it is. as the ultimate punishment
on earth, the indispensable keystone of every ordered
system of criminal law. No apparent reasons which
are alleged against it can withstand any serious
criticism. We blush that men should maintain that
the State commits a wrong when it attacks the life of
the criminal. The State, which has the right to
sacrifice for its own protection the flower of its youth,
is to feel so nice a regard for the life of a murderer !
We must rather allow unreservedly to the State the
right to make away with men who are undoubtedly
injurious to the common weal. Accept this also as
true, that the death punishment must be permitted to
the army in time of war, even by those people who at

§ 24] ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW 111

other times think to dispose of it by phrases. If a
deserter cannot be shot forthwith, then war is not
possible. And yet a deserting soldier may have many
moral grounds of excuse in his favour which a common
assassin cannot adduce.

That the powers that be must bear the sword is a
biblical expression which runs deep in the blood of the
honest man ; if this truth is to be banished out of the
world, great wrong is done to the simple moral feeling
of the people. The ultimate problems of the moral
life are to be solved in the domain of the practical, not
of the theoretical, reason. The conscience of every
earnest man demands that blood be atoned by blood,
and the common man must simply grow doubtful of
the existence of justice on earth, if this last and
highest punishment is not inflicted. Picture to your-
self a murderer of the type of the Australian murderers,
whose murdering runs in the blood, who is condemned
to penal servitude for life. He breaks out, murders
again, and returns in quiet contentment to the same
prison, since the State can inflict no other punishment.
Does such a State not do violence to every moral
feeling ? It makes itself ridiculous and contemptible
if it cannot finally dispose of the criminal. There must
be a limit for mercy and indulgence, as for the law, a
last limit at which the State says : " This is the end,
humanity is no longer possible here." It must be

112 ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE [b* iv

possible to inflict at last a punishment beyond which
there is nothing, and that is the punishment of death.

To this far-reaching privilege of the presiding judge
there is added before everything in England the
unanimity of the jury, while in France, where, since
the Eevolution, the English trial by jury has been
adopted, but at the same time mutilated, conclusions
by majority were introduced. Most certainly the
English procedure in this respect is the only proper
one. By conclusions of a majority the guilt or inno-
cence of a prisoner is as little decided as a religious or
scientific problem. The question, "Has A murdered
B?" cannot be answered by the vote of a majority.
The demand for unanimity is, on the whole, in spite of
its severity, fully justified, for here strength of character
can be shown. How often does it happen that a single
juryman influences the waverers because he has an
inner conviction of the correctness of his opinion!
The English have held to this principle to this day
with an energy which redounds very greatly to their
honour. We, on the contrary, have still far too much
respect for the moral cowardice which plays so great a
part in this trial-by-jury system. It is much too
pleasant for many men to allow themselves to be out-
voted. There are such natures everywhere, and among

§24] ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW 113

the very people who call themselves liberal-minded.
Our liberals are true types of men who like to allow
themselves to be outvoted. The juryman is more than
any other exposed to this moral danger of the tempta-
tion to say " no " in the silent hope of being outvoted ;
therefore the stern English principle of unanimity is
altogether to be approved.

§ 25. The Finances of the State.

All this was changed by the gigantic convulsions
of the Napoleonic wars ; all States were now com-
pelled to contract war-loans. All emerged from the
huge combat laden with heavy debts, and in Germany
the opinion very naturally developed itself, that it was
best for a State, just as for a private individual, to
have no debts at all, and that consequently States in
times of peace should conduct their affairs economically
and gradually pay off all war-time debts. This view
found its theoretical expression in Nebenius's classic,
"Public Credit" (1820). In it the most intelligent
of the financiers of Baden at that time makes the
assertion, that the debt of the State is the worm that
gnaws at the roots of the tree of policy ; and that it
ought to be gradually paid off as soon as possible.

This Philistine doctrine found approval among the

114 ADMINISTKATION OF THE STATE [bk.iv

honest, thrifty Prussian officialdom of the old school,
and our national debt legislation of 1820 started from
the hope that we would succeed in paying off by 1860
the whole of the national debt, as the extinction took
place according to a fixed plan. But then the dis-
covery was presently made that States which had a
much greater national debt, such as France and
England, were increasing in prosperity still faster than
Prussia. England had the largest national debt of all
the countries of Europe, and, although little was paid off,
its wealth was growing and growing beyond measure.
Thus, after the extinction of the Prussian national debt
had continued for a number of years, the old minister
Pother himself became perplexed. In 1843 he drew
up a memorial in which he submitted to Frederick
William IV. that they ought not to continue too long
with the extinction of the national debt. In 1852 it
would amount to only 100 million dollars ; then they
must stop, as it ought not to drop below that. There
were capitalists in Prussia who wished to invest their
money safely somewhere, and who would then go abroad.
This representative of the old school of Prussian officials
had thus learned by experience the hollowness of that
theory. But, that the national debt must even be con-
siderably increased again, he did not see yet ; such in-
sight was too far removed from the views of the period.

§25] THE FINANCES OF THE STATE 115

In contrast to the war-loan, which only attracts
voluntary capital, the war-tax takes capital every-
where by compulsion, even in places where it is not
available, and in places where it perhaps brings in ten
per cent. So we arrive at the result that an intelligent
utilization of the State's credit may be, from the point
of view of political economy, more correct than the
cheaper method of increased taxation. If we consider
the conditions in England, which have been the origin
of her huge national debt, it is evident that even
England could not at that time have borne the pres-
sure of the taxes that would have been necessary.
She undoubtedly acted correctly, whatever mistakes she
made in details, when she employed the medium of
credit for her Napoleonic wars, and left undisturbed
the capital that was bearing better interest in private
trade. That England kept becoming richer in spite of
the colossal increase of her national debt, is to be
explained in that way. And if any one tried to say
of this, that these war-loans have been unproductive,
even in the narrowest economic sense, we should be
obliged to laugh. Was it an unproductive war-policy
that brought the Cape of Good Hope, and who knows
what else, into England's big pockets ? The richest
countries of the earth had been won.

But we see further, that with increasing economic
culture in a nation a whole class of capitalists is neces-

116 ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE [bk. iv

sarily developed, and that it is a vital point for the State
to bind this capital to itself. For, if it resigns itself and
makes no use of its credit, it drives it abroad or into
private businesses of every kind, very many of which
are fraudulent. Thus the surprising truth emerges
that, for the sake of public order and solidity, a State
is in duty bound to have a large debt. That leads
still further. My old friend Karl Mathy used always
to say : " I wish nothing better for us Germans than
a really heavy imperial debt ; it would be the strongest
material bond." The truth that lies in these words
is unmistakable. We have seen it much too late.
What the fact, that the South German capitalists all
possessed Austrian securities, meant for the attitude of
South Germany in 1866, is known to every one who
lived there at that time.

France owes very much in this respect to her national
debt organization. The fine, never-sufficiently-to-be-
admired, national sense of the French brings it about
of itself that every Frenchman who saves — and what
Frenchman does not save ?— invests his capital in the
three-per-cent. consols, and only retains a fixed sum
for speculative shares. That is an invaluable bond
for the unity of the State. If after each of the num-
berless convulsions the State recovered its feet again
so quickly, then there was that very obvious material
cause, besides many moral reasons. The picture of the

§25] THE FINANCES OF THE STATE 117

French that has been so often drawn in our country
since the time of " Young Germany " is indeed a com-
pletely false one. The French are more accurate
reckoners, more sparing and saving than we Germans.
The German has often by nature a trait not only of
heroic boldness, but also of heroic carelessness, much
more so than the shrewd, experienced Latin. The
funds are for the saving Frenchman a bond which
knits him very closely to his State ; the State must
not be ruined on any account.

§ 26. Administration in the Narrower Sense.

In England the boundary-line between the officials
proper and the so-called "clerks" is placed, accord-
ing to our ideas, very high up. The officials, in
our sense of the word, number eighty at most. All
the rest are "clerks," executive tools; they do not
rise to the higher posts. English officialdom is not,
like ours, a universally respected class ; " clerks " of
good family are found only in India, if at all. Eow-
land Hill was never an actual minister, an independent
manager of the postal system ; he remained always
chief "clerk" in the Post Office. This dependent
position, subaltern in the worst sense, of officialdom
in England is of a piece, as we have seen, with the

118 ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE [bk.it

whole character of the old English State, which was
thoroughly aristocratic. Even in France the boundary-
line is placed very high up between the small number
of fonctionnaires and the huge majority of employes,
the subalterns, who may be dismissed, like clerks,
without ceremony and without pension. In this
case, however, it is not to assure the aristocracy
of Parliament, but in order that the head of the
State for the time being may keep the whole mass
of officials in hand ; the possibility of sweeping away
a great number at one time ad nutum principis must
exist.

Germany, in accordance with her eminently scientific
character, seeks the essence of genuine officialdom in an
intellectual census. The idea that, with the evidence
of a certain degree of education, the proof of ability to
govern men is also adduced, is a genuinely German
one, and is deeply rooted in the soil of our somewhat
theoretical idealism. On the whole, however, it has
proved itself to be true with us. The boundary-line
between officials proper and subalterns is placed in
Germany where the students end. Only in more
recent times have other categories of officials, who can
compare with the students, also been formed, in conse-
quence of the great development of technical science.
This boundary-line is now very much lower with us
than in France and England. It goes down to the

§26] IN THE NARROWER SENSE 119

lowest assessor, and for that reason German officialdom
retains its, in a good sense, democratic character. But
at the same time there has been developed within it a
series of conceptions of the honour of the class which
are foreign to other nations.

BOOK V. THE STATE IN INTERNATIONAL
INTERCOURSE

§ 27. History of the Company of States.

. . . With the Seven Years' War was linked the great
colonial war between England and France, by which
the question, whether the ocean should belong to the
Latin race or the Germanic race, was finally decided.
England conquered so decidedly that even to-day her
predominance on the sea still continues. But every
new victory over the French became for the English
an occasion for trampling the law of nations underfoot.
Under the appearance of fairness and justice, revolting
ill-treatment of neutrals was perpetrated at sea. When
the American colonies, which in the war against France
had fought heroically on England's side, broke away
from the mother country, a feeling of malicious joy
passed over every land. . .

And, finally, the great national movements in Central
Europe also break out: in 1859 the rising of Italy,

§27] HISTORY OF COMPANY OF STATES 121

which leads in two short years to a united State,
and since 1866 the decision in Germany. The victory
of Germany over France turns the old system upside-
down. Like Spain since the Pyrenean peace, France
shows herself after the battle of Sedan powerless to
dominate the world henceforth. The map of our part
of the globe has been much more natural since ; the
centre is strengthened, the inspired idea, that the
centre of gravity of Europe must lie in the middle,
has become reality. Through the founding of the
German empire a tranquillity has entered spontane-
ously into the system of States, inasmuch as ambition
in Prussia can now be silent ; Prussia has essentially
attained the power she required. What threatens the
peace of Europe at the present time is the reaction of
those States on the circumference, who have been
gradually forced into the background by the great
reconstruction, and cannot bear with patience the loss
of their former greatness. This elevation of Germany
to real power is the one great change of the European
system of States, which began with the year 1866;
the other, the results of which have not yet borne
their full fruit, is that a sixth power, Italy, has entered
the old pentarchy of Europe. Spain's claim is a purely
formal one, a mere question of vanity. On the contrary,
one can say of Italy, that she is beginning to become
a Great Power, without having been one hitherto. If

122 INTERNATIONAL INTERCOURSE [bk. v

Italy wishes to become a real Great Power, she must
fight ; her first victories will raise her to the position
to which that gifted nation has a distinct claim.

This is how we stand in the interior of Europe.
Add to this the wonderfully altered conditions out-
side our part of the globe. In the course of little
more than half a century a transformation has been
accomplished, such as the earlier world never knew.
China and Japan, which were formerly hermetically
sealed to Europeans, began to open their harbours.
Even of Australia it can be said, that it was only dis-
covered fifty years ago ; previous to that it was only
a convict colony. In 1860 the proud expression was
heard, " The South Sea is wakening up," a prophecy
which has now been fulfilled. England, while posing
as the defender of Liberalism, egged on the European
States against one another, kept Europe in a condition
of latent unrest, and conquered half the world in the
mean time. And, if she continues to be successful in
maintaining this condition of unrest on the Continent,
she will put many more countries into her big pocket.
Our nineteenth century is, as it were, the executor of
the sixteenth. The discovery of the New World,
which Columbus accomplished, has only now become a
practical reality. The non-European world is entering
more and more within the range of vision of the
European States, and without any doubt the nations

§ 27] HISTORY OF COMPANY OF STATES 123

of Europe must lay themselves out to subdue them
directly or indirectly. We see the great process of
expansive civilization continuing with the irresistible
force of a power of Nature. Here there is no equili-
brium, even in the slightest degree. He is a fool who
would believe that this process of development could
ever come to a standstill; but he who believes in
perpetual peace must assume this. Not even on the
map can we dream out a distribution of countries
which would insure it. And the nations themselves
are something living and growing. No one can say
with absolute certainty when the small nationalities
will decay internally and shrivel up, or when, on the
other hand, they will exhibit an unexpected vital
energy. The further course of things will depend
upon this also, but that it will continue to be a per-
petual growth and transformation, is as clear as noon-
day. And it is just in the changeful course of its history
that the greatness of the human race displays itself ;
that the finest fruits of human culture and civilization
ripen.

§ 28. International Law and Intercourse.

It is the very domain of war, however, in which,
at the same time, the triumph of human reason is

124 INTERNATIONAL INTERCOURSE [bk. v

most clearly exhibited. All noble nations have felt
that the letting-loose of physical force in war required
fixed laws, and therefore an international law of war,
based on reciprocity, has developed. The greatest
triumph of the science of international law lies in the
field that is considered by fools to be purely and simply
a barbaric one ; in the law of war. "We seldom find
brutal contraventions of this law in modern times. It
is, on the whole, the outstanding beauty of international
law, that here, unmistakably, a continual progress is
shown, and that, through the universalis consensus alone,
a series of principles of international law has developed
so firmly, that we can say to-day that they stand as
securely as any legal axiom in the private code of any
State. It is clear that international law must limp
some paces behind national law, for certain principles
of law and civilization must first be perfected within
the States, before it is resolved to recognize them in
international intercourse also. Thus no proceedings
could be taken against slavery in the way of inter-
national law, until the idea of the dignity of man had
spread so universally as it has done in our century.
International law has developed in the course of
centuries to an intensity of consciousness of right,
which permits its formal part, at least, to appear fully
assured. The publicity of political life nowadays con-
tributes greatly to this. The times of the English

§28] INTERNATIONAL LAW 125

blue-books are indeed past. These blue, yellow, green-
books and so on, are only intended to strew incense
before the Philistine, which he cannot see through ; it
is not in the least difficult for a skilled diplomatist to
deceive Parliament in this way. But the whole char-
acter of the life of the State has become so public
nowadays, that a gross contravention of international
law immediately excites great indignation among all
civilized nations.

The right of the State which is waging war to bring
all its troops into the field, no matter whether they
are barbarians or civilized men, can be just as little
disputed. Here we must remain unprejudiced as re-
gards ourselves in order to avoid prejudices against any
nation. How the Germans in the last war accused
the French of murder because they set the Turcos to
fight a civilized European nation ! Of course one says
things like that in the excitement of war ; but science
must remain calm and sober, and declare that this was
in no way contrary to international law. For it re-
mains the truth, that a State which is fighting is
entitled and bound to bring into the fight all physical
forces, all troops that it possesses. Where, then,
is the limit ? Where is Eussia, with her amiable
tribes, to draw the line in this matter ? The physical

126 INTERNATIONAL INTERCOURSE [bk. v

strength of a State can and must be fully employed in
war, but only in the chivalrous forms which have been
established by a long series of experiences of war. Of
course the assertion of the French that they marched
at the head of civilization was placed in a peculiar
light by their use of such troops. A whole series of
complaints has its sole origin in the fact that demands
are made upon a State which it cannot possibly fulfil.
In the national wars of to-day every brave subject is
a spy. Therefore the expulsion of 80,000 Germans
from France in the year 1870 was not, in point of
fact, contrary to international law. Only the fact that
the French acted with a certain brutality in the matter
is not to be approved.

Of humanity in warfare, the well-known aphorism
holds good in theory everywhere, in practice, of
course, only in land warfare, that it is States and
not their individual citizens that make war on one
another. There must therefore be certain forms by
which those persons can be recognized who are en-
titled to make war in the name of the State and to be
treated as soldiers. There is no general unanimity
as yet upon this point, and that is a nasty gap in
international law. For on the feeling of the soldier
that he has only to do with the enemy's soldiers, and
does not need to fear that he will find every peasant,
with whom he associates peacefully, aiming at him from

§28] INTERNATIONAL LAW 127

behind a bush half an hour later — on that feeling all
humanity in war rests. If the soldier does not know
whom he has to look upon as soldiers in the enemy's
country, whom as robbers and waylayers, then he
must become cruel and unfeeling. He alone can be
looked upon as a soldier who has sworn the oath of
fidelity to the colours, stands under the articles of
war, and can be recognized by some distinguishing
mark, which need not be a complete uniform. Euthless
severity against the franc- tireurs who swarm round the
enemy without standing under the articles of war is self-
evident. It is urgently necessary that an international
agreement should be come to regarding the forms by
which it may be recognized if an armed man really be-
longs to a legitimate army. This question was debated in
Brussels in 1 874, and the diversity of interests was then
disclosed. Small States like Switzerland had no great
desire to enter into binding obligations in the matter.
Every State is still in the mean time thrown back
upon its own resources, and each settles, according to its
own discretion, which enemies it looks upon as belong-
ing to the army and which as simple robbers. From
a moral point of view we could not but have respect
for many franc-tireurs in 1870-71, who tried in
despair to rescue their fatherland ; but from the point
of view of international law they were street-robbers. . .

128 INTERNATIONAL INTERCOURSE [bk.v,§28

Even when the power of the enemy is an actual, purely-
military one, and the point whether enemies belong to
the army or not can be clearly and definitely decided,
private property can be spared in very large measure.
Requisitions are permitted ; it is the universal custom
to give loois for them ; it is, of course, left to the con-
quered to get them all paid later. War against
private property as such, of which Melac's devastation
of the Palatinate is a terrible example, or the burning
of a village out of pure wantonness, is considered
nowadays by all civilized States as an offence against
international law. Private property may only be
injured to such an extent as is absolutely necessary for
the successful conduct of the war. . .

There has further been developed in international
law the principle that those great treasures of culture
of a State, which minister to Art and Science, must be
looked upon as the common property of all mankind,
and must be secured from loot and robbery. Formerly
this principle was systematically trodden underfoot.

THE END.

CLASQOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES
TWF UNIVERSITY LIRRARV

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

Los Angeles

This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.

^ 2

-v mm

MAR 196P

• nC

m HW1119*

r<

•m

iff

■

JU

;0 LD-

5 2 T»

Form LO-Scries 4939

UNIVERSITY of CALIFOKN

AT

\

3 1158 00610 1868