Germany and the Next War | Page 4

that our victorious wars have
never disturbed our business life, and that the political power regained
by war rendered possible the vast progress of our trade and commerce.
Universal military service, too, contributes to the love of peace, for war

in these days does not merely affect, as formerly, definite limited
circles, but the whole nation suffers alike. All families and all classes
have to pay the same toll of human lives. Finally comes the effect of
that universal conception of peace so characteristic of the times--the
idea that war in itself is a sign of barbarism unworthy of an aspiring
people, and that the finest blossoms of culture can only unfold in peace.
Under the many-sided influence of such views and aspirations, we
seem entirely to have forgotten the teaching which once the old
German Empire received with "astonishment and indignation" from
Frederick the Great, that "the rights of States can only be asserted by
the living power"; that what was won in war can only be kept by war;
and that we Germans, cramped as we are by political and geographical
conditions, require the greatest efforts to hold and to increase what we
have won. We regard our warlike preparations as an almost
insupportable burden, which it is the special duty of the German
Reichstag to lighten so far as possible. We seem to have forgotten that
the conscious increase of our armament is not an inevitable evil, but the
most necessary precondition of our national health, and the only
guarantee of our international prestige. We are accustomed to regard
war as a curse, and refuse to recognize it as the greatest factor in the
furtherance of culture and power.
Besides this clamorous need of peace, and in spite of its continued
justification, other movements, wishes, and efforts, inarticulate and
often unconscious, live in the depths of the soul of the German people.
The agelong dream of the German nation was realized in the political
union of the greater part of the German races and in the founding of the
German Empire. Since then there lives in the hearts of all (I would not
exclude even the supporters of the anti-national party) a proud
consciousness of strength, of regained national unity, and of increased
political power. This consciousness is supported by the fixed
determination never to abandon these acquisitions. The conviction is
universal that every attack upon these conquests will rouse the whole
nation with enthusiastic unanimity to arms. We all wish, indeed, to be
able to maintain our present position in the world without a conflict,
and we live in the belief that the power of our State will steadily
increase without our needing to fight for it. We do not at the bottom of
our hearts shrink from such a conflict, but we look towards it with a

certain calm confidence, and are inwardly resolved never to let
ourselves be degraded to an inferior position without striking a blow.
Every appeal to force finds a loud response in the hearts of all. Not
merely in the North, where a proud, efficient, hard-working race with
glorious traditions has grown up under the laurel-crowned banner of
Prussia, does this feeling thrive as an unconscious basis of all thought,
sentiment, and volition, in the depth of the soul; but in the South also,
which has suffered for centuries under the curse of petty nationalities,
the haughty pride and ambition of the German stock live in the heart of
the people. Here and there, maybe, such emotions slumber in the shade
of a jealous particularism, overgrown by the richer and more luxuriant
forms of social intercourse; but still they are animated by latent energy;
here, too, the germs of mighty national consciousness await their
awakening.
Thus the political power of our nation, while fully alive below the
surface, is fettered externally by this love of peace. It fritters itself away
in fruitless bickerings and doctrinaire disputes. We no longer have a
clearly defined political and national aim, which grips the imagination,
moves the heart of the people, and forces them to unity of action. Such
a goal existed, until our wars of unification, in the yearnings for
German unity, for the fulfilment of the Barbarossa legend. A great
danger to the healthy, continuous growth of our people seems to me to
lie in the lack of it, and the more our political position in the world is
threatened by external complications, the greater is this danger.
Extreme tension exists between the Great Powers, notwithstanding all
peaceful prospects for the moment, and it is hardly to be assumed that
their aspirations, which conflict at so many points and are so often
pressed forward with brutal energy, will always find a pacific
settlement.
In this struggle of the most powerful nations, which employ peaceful