Gems (?) of German Thought Part 10

War is the source of all good growth. Without war the development of nations is impossible--K. WAGNER, K., p. 183.

250. The sight of blood and wounds steels the nerves of the soul, the horrors of war stimulate the spirits, so that instead of the falsehood and cowardice of enervation, the old heroic virtues are restored ...

fear of G.o.d, martial bravery, obedience, up-rightness of mind, constancy, truth ... manlike courage, manly pity, and all that is great and good in humanity.--E. v. LASAULX, P.G., p. 86.

_Compare Nos. 254, 311._

251. The brutal incidents inseparable from every war vanish completely before the idealism of the main result.... Strength, truth and honour come to the front and are brought in to play.--GENERAL V. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 27.

252. War is the most august and sacred of human activities.... For us, too, the great, joyful hour of battle will one day strike.... The openly expressed longing for war often degenerates into vain boasting and ludicrous sabre-rattling. But still and deep in the German heart must the joy in war and the longing for war endure.--OTTO VON GOTTBERG, in _Weekly Paper for the Youth of Germany_, 25th January, 1913. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 1.

253. Life as the most necessary medium of Kultur--that is the ground on which the modern apostles of peace take their stand.... But our German morality makes short work of all such rubbish. It says with Moltke: "Eternal peace is only a dream, _and not even a beautiful dream_!" No, certainly not beautiful, for a peace which could no longer look forward to war as the issue even of the worst complications would poison and rot away our inmost heart, until we became loathsome to ourselves.--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 157 (1893).

254. Whosoever has crossed a great battlefield and has shuddered in the depths of his soul at all the horrors confronting him, will have found new strength and exaltation in the thought that here the whole tragic gravity of military necessity is regnant, and here a justifiable pa.s.sion has done its work.--GENERAL v. HARTMANN, D.R., XIV., p. 84.

255. The appeal to arms will be valid until the end of history, and therein lies the sacredness of war.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p.

29.

_See also No. 314._

=War and Biology.=

256. We children of the future ... do not by any means think it desirable that the kingdom of righteousness and peace should be established on the earth.... We rejoice in all men who, like ourselves, love danger, war and adventure ... we count ourselves among the conquerors; we ponder over the need of a new order of things, even of a new slavery--for every strengthening and elevation of the type "man" also involves a new form of slavery.--FR. NIETZSCHE, J.W., section 377.

257. Unless we choose to shut our eyes to the necessity of evolution, we must recognize the necessity of war. We must accept war, which will last as long as development and existence; we must accept eternal war.--K. WAGNER, K., p. 153.

258. "War is the father of everything," says Herac.l.i.tus. It will be the father of the new German race of the future.--PROF. E. Ha.s.sE, Z.D.V., p. 126.

259. The efforts directed towards the abolition of war must not only be termed foolish, but absolutely _immoral_, and must be _stigmatized as unworthy of the human race_.... The weak nation is to have the same right to live as the powerful and vigorous nation! The whole idea represents a presumptuous encroachment on the natural laws of development.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 34.

260. It is proved beyond all shadow of doubt that regular war (_der regelrechte Krieg_) is, not only from the biological and true kultural standpoint, the best and n.o.blest form of the struggle for existence, but also, from time to time, an absolute necessity for the maintenance of the State and society.--DR. SCHMIDT, of Gib.i.+.c.henfels, at meeting of Pan-German League, Berlin, October, 1912. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 73.

261. War is a biological necessity of the first importance, a regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed with.... "War is the father of all things." The sages of antiquity, long before Darwin, recognized this.... "To supplant or to be supplanted is the essence of life," says Goethe, "and the strong life gains the upper hand."--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 18.

_See also No. 386._

=War and Kultur.=

262. It is nothing but fanaticism to expect very much from humanity when it has forgotten how to wage war. For the present we know of no other means whereby the rough energy of the camp, the deep impersonal hatred, the cold-bloodedness of murder with a good conscience, the general ardour of the system in the destruction of the enemy ... can be as forcibly and certainly communicated to enervated nations as is done by every great war. Kultur can by no means dispense with pa.s.sions, vices and malignities.--FR. NIETZSCHE, H.T.H., section 477.

263. It is here demonstrated with rare cogency and conclusiveness that war is not only a factor, but the main factor, in true, genuine Kultur--not only its creator but its preserver.... Although the author thus recognizes war as an element in the divine world-order, he by no means ignores the blessings of peace, as the second factor in true, genuine Kultur, in a certain measure complementary to war.--_Berliner neueste Nachrichten_, 24th December, 1912, in review of _Der Krieg als Kulturfaktor_, by DR. SCHMIDT, of Gib.i.+.c.henfels. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 20.

264. No sooner are airs.h.i.+ps invented than the General Staffs set to work to devise methods of applying them to destruction.... Thus every achievement of "Kultur"[27] and of the human intelligence is only a means to more barbarous processes of war: and yet the pacifists see in the progress of the human intelligence a guarantee of world-peace!--L.

GUMPLOWICZ, S.I.U., p. 161.

265. I must first of all examine the aspirations for peace, which seem to dominate our age and threaten to poison the soul of the German people.... I must try to prove that war is not merely a necessary element in the life of nations, but an indispensable factor of Kultur, in which a truly civilized nation finds the highest expression of strength and vitality.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 14.

266. If the Twilight of the G.o.ds that has now so long brooded over the European race and Kultur is at last to vanish before the light of morning, then we Germans in particular must no longer see in war our destroyer ... but must recognize in it our healer, our physician.--_Tagliche Rundschau_, 12th November, 1912. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 23.

267. Our own country, by employing its military powers, has attained a degree of Kultur which it never could have reached by the methods of peaceful development.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 119.

268. War is to us only a means, but the state of preparation for war is more than a means, it is an end.--PROF. E. Ha.s.sE, Z.D.V., p. 126.

_See also Nos. 84, 91._

=Blood and Iron.=

269. The time for petty politics is past; the next century[28] will bring the struggle for the dominion of the world--the _compulsion_ to great politics.--FR. NIETZSCHE, B.G.E., section 208.

270. I greet all the signs indicating that a more manly and warlike age is commencing, which will, above all, bring heroism again into honour!--FR. NIETZSCHE, J.W., section 283.

271. General Keim from Berlin insisted that the path to German unity and power was not paved with sealing-wax, printers' ink and parliamentary resolutions, but marked by blood, wounds and deeds of arms. States could be maintained only by the means by which they were created.--At meeting of Pan-German League, Augsburg, September, 1912.

NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 72.

272. It is only since the last war [1870] that a sounder theory has arisen of the State and its military power. Without war no State could be.... War, therefore will endure to the end of history, so long as there is multiplicity of States.--H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. i., p.

65.

273. We owe it to Napoleon ... that several warlike centuries, which have not had their like in past history, may now follow one another--in short, that we have entered upon _the cla.s.sical age of war_, war at the same time scientific and popular, on the grandest scale (as regards means, talents and discipline) to which all coming millenniums will look back with envy and awe as a work of perfection--for the national movement out of which this martial glory springs, is only the counter-_choc_ against Napoleon, and would not have existed without him. To him, consequently, one will one day be able to attribute the fact that man in Europe has again got the upper hand of the merchant and the Philistine.--FR. NIETZSCHE, J.W., section 362.

274. What men tower highest in the history of the nation, whom does the German heart cherish with the most ardent love? Goethe? Schiller?

Wagner? Marx? Oh, no--but Barbarossa, the great Frederick, Blucher, Moltke, Bismarck, the hard men of blood. It is to them, who offered up thousands of lives, that the soul of the people goes out with tenderest affection, with positively adoring grat.i.tude. Because they did what now we ought to do.... Our holiest raptures of homage are paid to these t.i.tans of the Blood-Deed.--DR. W. FUCHS, in article on "Psychiatrie and Politics," in _Die Post_, 28th January, 1912.

NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 2.

275. I must a.s.sert with emphasis that the cardinal sin of our whole policy has. .h.i.therto been that we have lost sight of the eternal truth: POLITICS MEAN THE WILL TO POWER.... The history of the world teaches us that only those people have strongly a.s.serted themselves who have without hesitation placed the Will to Power higher than the Will to Peace.--GENERAL KEIM, at meeting of Central Committee of Pan-German League, Munich, April, 1913. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 77.

276. This nation possesses an excess of vigour, enterprise, idealism, and spiritual energy which qualifies it for the highest place; but a malignant fairy laid on its cradle the most petty theoretical dogmatism.... Yet the heart of this people can always be won for great and n.o.ble aims, even though such aims can only be attended by danger.... An intense longing for a foremost place among the Powers and for manly action fills our nation. Every vigorous utterance, every bold political step of the Government, finds in the soul of the people a deeply-felt echo, and loosens the bonds which fetter all their forces.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 256.

277. War does not depend on the human will, but is for the most part an ineluctable, elementary happening, a daemonic power forcing itself upon us, against which all written treaties, all peace conferences and humanitarian agitations, come pitifully to wreck.--GENERAL KEIM, at meeting of the German Defence League, Ca.s.sel, February, 1913. NIPPOLD, D.C., p. 82.

=War Necessary to Germany.=

278. If the health and life of Germany require this mortal and terrible remedy [war], _let us not hesitate to apply it_, so be it!

G.o.d is the Judge. I accept the awful responsibility.... G.o.d never forsakes a good German.--"AMICUS PATRIae," A.U.K., p. 15.

278a. Whoever loves his people and wishes to hasten the crisis of the present sickness, must yearn for war as the awakener of all that is good, healthy and strong in the nation.--D. FRYMANN, W.I.K.W., p. 53.

279. The duties and obligations of the German people ... cannot be fulfilled without drawing the sword.--GENERAL v. BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p.

15.

280. It is for social as much as for national and political reasons that we must fix our minds incessantly upon war; may the first ten or twenty years of the twentieth century bring it to us, for we have need of it!--D.B.B., p. 191.

281. It must be regarded as a quite unthinkable proposition that an agreement between France and Germany can be negotiated before the question between them has been once more decided by arms.--GENERAL V.

BERNHARDI, G.N.W., p. 91.

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