CHAPTER III
England
…
Colonies. – Treitschke’s
greatest grievance was that the England
possessed so many colonies which she had “acquired by theft, robbery and
treachery”, which she is utterly “unable to govern satisfactorily”. His
attitude may be summed up in a Cramb’s words: “How is the persistence of a
great Unwarlike Power sprawling Fafnirwise across the planet to be tolerated by
a nation of warriors?”
Already when a
mere boy Treitschke wrote a poem about one Ambrosius Dalfinger who in 1529
tried to conquer Venezuela’s
coast for his native town, the mighty Hansa-town, Augsburg:
“Tears must in
very truth bedim my eye!
Our sons at the
time went not out as beggars,
Exiled by the
misery of their Fatherland,
And scorned by
haughty foreigners
As stupid
children, as notorious thieves-
No! Dalfinger’s
victorious host came to those shores
Bringing
destruction, death! but also mighty deeds.
Resplendent
standest thou before my eyes
Dalfinger, a
German Cortez, magnificent and proud!
In a paper on
“The Future of German Secondary Education” we read: “It is possible to provide
this nation with its over-flowing forces, with its antagonism, to the cowardly
doctrine of the two-children system, is it possible to provide it with a place
where they have sufficient elbow-room, without lost to the Fatherland?”
In a speech of
1885 Treitschke said: “Who would have dreamed only 20 years ago that our German
banner would be flying to-day in three-quarters of the globe? Yes, we will be
there too, we will guarantee that Germany has her proper share in ruling the
heathen world by European Christianity, in order that at last what has already
been accomplished on land may be attained on the sea – a real Balance of Power,
in order that the world wide sway of one Power on the sea, with its memories of
the barbarism of earlier centuries, may be broken”.
Colonies,
according to him, enable the State to provide for its surplus population
without losing the working power and the capital of the emigrants, which in the
past only enriched America
and other countries. But not only for mere materialistic reasons are colonies
absolute necessity. Colonies are not only an economic necessity but also a
moral necessity for a powerful expanding nation which can claim to be a missionary
of civilization. Treitschke, to give him some credit, had in view with that
probably only savage and semi-civilized countries. But it is England, England all the while! “In this
world of ours a thing that is a sham through and through can not last for ever.
It may last for a time, but it is doomed to fall; in a world which is governed
by valor, by the Will unto Power, there is no room for such a sham!” Thus spoke
Treitschke, the apostle of the religion of valor!
Germany and England.
– In order to “explain” this unfortunate conflict between the descendants of
those men whom a Tacitus admired and Cesar respected, there have been on both
sides the most fanatic efforts to find scape-goats. The Emperor William II and
Sir Edward Grey are almost the favorites. No insinuation is sinister enough, no
adjective vile enough but it will be applied to the by certain sections of the
public and the press. Then here in our country Treitschke and Bernhardi are
easy seconds, and poor old Nietzsche gets the third place. Of course this
scape-goat business is ridiculous. Nietzsche despised the Germans, and if a
certain enterprising bookseller in London
with his big window-placard “The Euro-Nietzschean war” imagines he has solved
the problem, he is mistaken. The spirit of Nietzsche’s philosophy may have
contributed to some extent to counteract Christian influences in Germany, and thus have facilitated the
catastrophe, but really Nietzsche is read very little now in Germany in
sprite of Gerhardt Hauptmann’s opinion.
Bernhardi too is
much over-rated. Hundreds of German books on war is published every year, and
Bernhardy is just a fortunate author whose books were borne on the crest of the
wave. Treitschke himself is but one of many. His successor Delbruck is just as
bad. Delbruck too objects “other Powers” dividing up the world, and insists on
share for Germany.
He calls Britain
“our inveterate enemy”.
The real
immediate cause of this world-conflict are much more complex and cannot
possibly be simplified into the comfortable formula of a few names or
catch-words.
There is the
absence of an international law which commands obedience. There are vested
interests. In Germany
men like Krupp, Gwinner, Rathenau, Ballin, Thyssen and others are by the very
nature of their business compelled to be intensely “patriotic”. There are men
like that here in our country too. Now such men, at least most of them, are
“all honorable men”, but they are unconsciously foes to the comity of nations.
Then they are the aspirations of rulers and politicians; there is the greed of
international financiers; there is the lauded ambition of the soldier.
Finally, there
is the incredible ignorance about one another that estranges nations. The
“literary” output of the war books in Germany, as well as here, is a proof.
Gentlemen who have not the slightest knowledge of the opponents’ history and
traditions, often not even of their language, write the most unspeakable
vitriolic nonsense about the “treacherous English”, “the modern Huns”; German
scholars, may be great scholars in their line – whose knowledge of England and
English character is based on an intimate acquaintance with the English spirit,
English home-life, and the English country-side, an acquaintance acquired in
Bloomsbury during their three months’ reading at the British museum – prove us
to be “decadents”, “materialists”, “shopkeepers”. And even the late Mr.
Gladstone, a fine classical scholar, was so ignorant of some things modern,
that he condemned Goethe as an immortal writer.
It is only if we
keep in mind the vastness and complexity of even direct causes, the slow
poisoning influence of indirect causes like ignorance and stupidity, that we
can judge Treitschke rightly and allot to him his proper share and proportion
of guilt. Then, perceiving him to be only one of the growths from the teeth of
the dragon Hate, only one of the giants whom Law, another Theseus, will slay –
we may, though we cannot forgive Treitschke, yet perhaps better understand his
point of view when he says:
“Our last
reckoning, that with England, will probably be the most tedious, and the most
difficult; for here we are confronted by a line of policy which for centuries,
almost unhindered by the other Powers, aims directly at maritime supremacy. How
long has Germany in all seriousness believed this insular race, which among all
the nations in Europe, is undoubtedly imbued with the most marked national
selfishness, the greatness of which consists precisely in its hard,
inaccessible one-sidedness, to be the magnanimous protector of the freedom of
all nations.
-Now, at last
our eyes begin to be opened, and we recognize what clear-headed political
thinkers have never doubted, that England State-policy since the days of
William III has never been anything else than remarkable shrewd and remarkably
conscienceless commercial policy. The extraordinary success of this
State-policy have been purchased at a high price, consisting in the first place
of a number of sins and enormities. The history of the English East-India
Company is the most defiled page in the annals of modern European nations, for
as the shocking vampirism of this merchant-rule sprang solely from greed, it
cannot be exhausted, as perhaps the acts of Philip II, or Robespierre may be,
by the fanaticism of a political conviction.
- England’s
commercial supremacy had its origin in the discords of the Continent, and owing
to her brilliant successes, which were often gained without struggle, there has
grown up in the English people a spirit of arrogance for which ‘Chauvinism’ is
too mild an expression. Sir Charles Dilke, the well-known Radical member of Mr.
Gladstone’s cabinet, in his book Greater
Britain, which is often mentioned, but, alas! too little read here, claims,
as necessary acquisitions for ‘Greater Britain’ China,
Japan, Chili,
Peru, the La Plata States,
the tablelands of Africa – in short, the whole
world. In spite of the outrageous ill-usage of Ireland,
and the bestial coarseness of the London mob, he
calls Great Britain
the land which from the earliest time exhibits the great amount of culture and
insight, together with the least intermixture of ignorance and crime. He looks
confidently forward to the time when Russia
and France will only be
pygmies by the side of England.
Ion only three passages does he deign to make a cursory mention of the Germans.
“Thus, then, the
manifold glories of the world’s history, which commenced with the empire of the
monosyllabic Chinese, are to conclude their melancholy cycle with the empire of
the monosyllabic British!”
CHAPTER IV
Unity
…
Outlines. – One of the
best stories that Kipling ever told us is that of The Ship that found himself…
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