No More Learning

And as long as this one Power insists on carrying
out this principle, all other nations must travel on
the same barbarous road. It is true that the con-
ditions prevalent on land can never prevail in
quite the same way at sea, because there are many
articles of commerce which are used in warfare.
The immunity of private property at sea in time
of war can, therefore, never be quite as great as
that assured to private property on land ; but this
is no reason why naval warfare should for ever
continue to be piracy, or why the belligerent
Powers should be entitled to snatch indiscrimi-
nately the property of each other's merchants.
Maritime law has hitherto only progressed
through the efforts of the navies of second-class
Powers. One is confronted at every moment with
the dictum that the Powers are driven to adopt
humaner methods by their desire to serve their
own purposes. Herein, also, lies the explanation of
the efforts made by the second-class navies to
obtain a humaner maritime law. It is not that
the English are worse people than we are, and if
we were in their position we might, perhaps, imi-
tate their conduct. As early as 1780 the navies
of the second rank united themselves in an alliance
for armed neutrality, and laid down the principle,
firstly, that the flag must protect the merchandise
over which it floats, and that articles of commerce
having no definite connection with war shall be
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? International Law 193
allowed free passage on a neutral ship ; and, second-
ly, that every blockade must be an actual one, and
that no Power has the right to declare an entire
line of coast blockaded unless the approaches to
it are actually closed by the presence of hostile
men-of-war.
Attempts were subsequently made in innumer-
able treaties to express these principles in law.
To-day, England has at last agreed to allow that
the flag covers the merchandise. This concession
is the outcome of the development of North
American naval power. If the question had been
one for Germany to decide, she would long ago
have procured some international agreement on
the immunity of private property at sea. Theory,
alone is, however, powerless in questions of inter-
national law, if the actual power of the States
concerned does not in some measure correspond
with it.
To conclude then, the conviction grows upon us
that it can never be the task of political science to
build up for itself phantastic structure in the air;
for only that is truly human which has its roots
in the historical facts of actual life. The destinies
of nations are worked out by means of a series of
repulsions and attractions, and they follow the
law of a principle of development whose ultimate
end is veiled from mortal eyes. Its very trend is
hidden from us except at rare moments. We must
seek to understand the ways in which divine in-
telligence has gradually revealed itself in the midst
13
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? 194 Treitschke
of all the conflicting movements of life; we must
not seek to dominate history. The noblest quality
of the practical statesman is his ability to point
to the signs of the times, and to realize in some
measure how universal history may develop at a
given moment. Further, nothing becomes a poli-
tician better than modesty. The circumstances
with which he is called upon to deal, are so various
and so complicated, that he must guard against
being carried away on dark and uncertain ways.
He must resign himself to desiring only the really
attainable, and to keeping his aim perpetually and
steadfastly in view. I shall be content if you have
learned during the course of these lectures how
manifold are the component parts which go to
make up a historical fact, and how it becomes us,
therefore, to be most deliberate in giving a verdict
in political matters. I shall, indeed, be satisfied
if these lectures have taught you to cultivate that
modesty which is the essential outcome of true
learning.
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? FIRST ATTEMPTS AT GERMAN
COLONIZATION.
THE strange confusion of ideas which we owe to
our fluctuating and antiquated party-doings
is nowhere so glaringly obvious as in the widely
spread opinion that the younger generation today
is more conservatively inclined than the older.
Some are glad of this, while others lament it and
attribute it to the seductive arts of reactionary
teachers; but hardly anyone disputes it as a fact.
And yet it is absolutely absurd to think so, for
ever since the beginning of the world the young
have always been more free-thinking than the old,
because they possess the happy privilege of living
more in the future than the present, and nothing
justifies the assumption that this natural law has
ceased to hold good nowadays. For though the
new generation may turn away with indifference
from the catch-words of the older liberalism, this
only shows that a new age with new ideals is
dawning. In these young men, whose childhood
was illuminated by the sun of Sedan, national pride
is not a feeling attained to, as in their fathers'
case, by hard struggles, but it is a strong spontane-
ous passion. They sing their " Germany, Germany
above all! " with a joyful confidence, such as only
195
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? 196 Treitschke
isolated strong characters of the older generation
could cherish. They regard the struggle for par-
liamentary rights, which to their elders was often
an aim in itself, at most as a means to an end.
The object of their ambition is that the young
giant who has just shaken the sleep from his eye-
lids should now use his strong arms to advance the
civilization of mankind and to make the German
name both formidable and precious to the world.
Therefore our German youth were thrilled as by
an electric shock when, in August, 1884, the news
came that our flag waved upon the coast of Angra
Pequena and the Cameroons, and that Germany
had taken the first modest but decided step in the
path of independent colonization.
To the ancient political system of Europe, which
was a result of the weakness of its central States,
a new combination of States has succeeded,
founded on the strength of Central Europe. By
means of a pacific policy on a large scale, our Gov-
ernment has obliged the other continental Powers
to adapt themselves to the new order of things,
while our legislation at the same time labours to
quell the social unrest which threatens the founda-
tions of all civilization. Thus before our eyes is
being fulfilled the prophecy of the Crown Prince
Frederick, that his country would be one day so
strong as to guard peace by righteous dealing, not
by inspiring fear; and it is only one more necessary
step in the path of this pacific policy if Germany
at last sets herself to take her proper share in the
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? German Colonization 197
great work of expansive civilization. Like so
many other happy forecasts of the sixteenth
century which have been first fulfilled in our days,
the proud expression "il mondo e poco, " which in
the days of Columbus sounded like an empty
boast, is now being verified. Now that we can
sail round the world in eleven weeks, it is really
small, and its political future is discernible to the
foreseeing eye.
With full confidence we may say to-day that the
democracies of the European nations and their
descendants will one day govern the whole world.
China and Japan may possibly still for centuries
preserve their old peculiar forms of civilization,
together with a strong blending of European cul-
ture ; in India though this is by no means certain
an independent Indian nationality may be
evolved from the intermingling of countless races
and religions; finally which is still more im-
probable the old bellicose Islam, when it has
been driven out of Europe, may form a new power-
ful State in Asia Minor; but with the exception of
these countries, in the whole world no other nation
is to be found that can in the long run withstand
the immense superiority of European arms and
commerce. The barrier is broken, and the stream
of European colonization must pour unceasingly
over all the world, far and near, and those who
live in the twentieth century will be able for the
first time in all seriousness to speak of a "world-
history. " We must at the same time remember
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? 198 Treitschke
that, " trees are not allowed to grow into the sky. " x
Nowhere in nature is mere largeness a decisive
factor. Just as our little earth, so far as we can
guess, is the noblest body in the solar system, so
this ancient multiform Europe, on however great
a scale international intercourse may take place,
and in any conceivable future, will always remain
the heart of the world, the home of all creative
culture, and therefore the place where all the
important questions of political power will be
decided. All colonies are like engrafted shoots;
they lack the youthful vigour which results from
natural growth from a root. There is indeed a
wonderful growth of commercial prosperity when
the rich capital and skilled energy of a civilized
nation come in contact with the untouched re-
sources of a new country; but quiet mental com-
posure, the source of all enduring works of art and
science, does not find a favourable atmosphere in
the restless hurry of colonial life. How much
more richly furnished by nature were the Greek
colonies in South Italy and Sicily than their little
motherland. There lay luxurious Sybaris; there
Syracuse, the metropolis of the Hellenic world;
there Akragas, "fairest city of mortals" as Pindar
calls it, surpassing Athens herself in splendour and
renown. And yet how small appears the share of
this richly favoured land in everything which
lends value and significance to the history of
Greece.
1 German proverb.
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? German Colonization 199
Similarly the history of North America, the
greatest of all modern colonies, only confirms
former experience. The economic energy of this
growing nation has already performed miracles
upon miracles; her giant railways, which cast into
the shade all similar works in the old world,
stretch from sea to sea. Still in spite of all auguries
the star of the world's history shows hitherto no
tendency to move westwards. That wealth of
intellectual life which Washington once hoped for
his country, has failed to appear, and many who
weary of Europe, went to America, have come
back, weary of America, because they could not
breathe the exhausted air of the land of the Al-
mighty Dollar.
How often have the newspapers of both hemi-
spheres referred to the future New Zealander, who,
according to Macaulay's famous prophecy, is one
day to look from the broken pillars of London
Bridge on the immeasurable ruins of London ! But
anyone, who soberly tests this majestic vision, will
arrive at the comforting conclusion that the said
New Zealander is hardly likely ever to be in the
position to undertake his archaeological journey to
those ruins. Christian nations cannot perish, and
the earth no longer harbours such countless swarms
of youthful barbarians, such as once destroyed the
Roman Empire. There is a great probability that
the nations of Europe, when the habitable globe
has been covered with their colonies, will not sink
from their height, but attain new vigour by the
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? Treitschke
emigration of their superfluous populations, and
the fulfilment of their new tasks of civilization.
When the first Spanish explorers landed in America
they bathed eagerly in every spring, because they
hoped there, in the West, to find the legendary
Fountain of Youth. The time seems approaching
when that longing of the early discoverers will find
its fulfilment, and the New World will prove a
" Fountain of Youth" for Europeans in a deeper
sense than they once thought. [^Through the
'colonization of the distant regions of the earth,
the history of Europe also acquires a newer, richer
significance, and Germany, with full right, demands
that she should not be left behind in this great
rivalry of nations. She feels not only mortified
in her political ambition when she considers her
position in the transatlantic world; but she feels
also a kind of moral shamefacedness when obliged
to confess that we Germans have only contributed
a very little to the great cosmopolitan works of
jnodern international intercourse^ The founding
of the International Postal Union and the part we
took in the building of the St. Gothard Railway
these are almost our only services in this sphere,
and how they shrink into insignificance when
compared with the achievements of English colo-
nial policy, or even with the works of the French-
man, Ferdinand Lesseps.
This feeling of shame is all the more oppressive
because we can assert that Germany yields to no
nation in its capacity for founding colonies. In
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? German Colonization 201
the countries on the right of the Elbe, our nation
once carried out the greatest and most fruitful
schemes of colonization which Europe has seen
since the days of the Roman Empire; for here it
succeeded in obliterating the usual distinction
between colony and motherland so completely,
that these colonized lands formed the nucleus of
our new system of States, and since Luther's time
were able to take part in the intellectual progress of
the nation, as equal allies of the older stock. For
more than two hundred years, Germany, solely
by the power of its free citizens, held supremacy
over the northern seas. By means of her commer-
cial colonies, the slumbering capacities of Scan-
dinavia for intercourse with other nations were
awakened, and certainly it was not due to our
fathers' fault, but to an unavoidable tragic fate,
that the glory of the Hanseatic League perished.
This was at the same time that the Italians, our
old companions in misfortune, lost command of the
sea in the south. For to every age and every
nation a limit of power is assigned. It was im-
possible that the two nations which through the
Renaissance and the Reformation had opened up
the way for modern civilization, should, at the
very time, when the discovery of the New World
had ruined all the usual routes of commerce, be
able to rival the Spaniards and Portuguese in their
foreign conquests.
It was not till later that the Germans incurred
the guilt of a grievous sin of omission, in the long,
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? 202 Treitschke
dreary time of peace which followed the Schmal-
kaldic War. Then it was that the German Pro-
testants had a safe prospect of recovering the last
command of the sea, if they had united with their
kindred co-religionsists in the Netherlands. But
at this most discreditable period of our modern
history, the two national faults, which still now so
often hamper our economic energy, doctrinaire
idealism and easy-going self-indulgence, were
strongly flourishing. The nation degenerated
through theological controversies and the coarse
sensuality of a sluggish peace. She left it to the
Dutch to break the naval power of the Spaniards,
and afterwards to the English to subdue the Dutch
conquerors. Everyone knows how terribly the sins
of those years of peace were punished by the
dire ruin of our ancient civilization. During the
two centuries of struggle which followed, when we
had painfully to recover the rule in our own
country, every attempt at German colonization
was naturally impossible. The ingenious African
schemes of the Great Elector were far in advance
of their time; they were doomed to failure; a
feudal agricultural country without a sea-board
could not possibly maintain control over a remote
colonial possession for any length of time.
But even during this long period of inland
quietude, our nation has shown that she is, accord-
ing to her capacity and position in the world, the
most cosmopolitan of all peoples; she lost neither
the old impulse to seek the distant, nor the power
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? German Colonization
to assert herself valiantly among foreign nations.
On all the battle-fields of the world German blood I
flowed in streams; most of the crowns of Europe 1
fell into the hands of German royal houses; and /
it was really through the power of Germany that /
Russia was enrolled among the nations of Europe.
It is true that this vast expenditure of overflowing
national forces only ratified anew the lament of /
Goethe that the Germans were respectable as in-
dividuals, but despicable as a wholeT) Again am
again the voice of Fate called to u^'sic vos non
vobis. " And when in recent times the peoples of
the Anglo-Saxon stock began to divide the trans-
atlantic world between them, the Germans were
again their unwearied associates. German traders
rivalled the leading firms of the world from Singa-
pore to Philadelphia. Millions of Germans helped
the North Americans to conquer their part of the
world for civilization.
But the Germans at home, had, so long as the
Federal Diet ruled over them, too heavy domestic
cares to think seriously about the lot of their
emigrants. They made a virtue of necessity, and
injheir philosophic way evolvedthe doctrine that
it was the historic destiny of
fe! errd~~fiar oUt there in the West with the genius of
It is true tnat tne Americans found
a less obscure description for this mysterious
"blending," though they now vainly seek to dis-
avow it; they said, "The Germans form an ex-
cellent fertilizer for our people! " When, just
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? 204 Treitschke
twenty years ago though I had then no anticipa-
tion of the near fulfilment of German destinies, I
ventured, in my treatise, Federal State and Uni-
fied State, to make the heretical remark that
only those States which possessed naval power
and ruled territories across the sea could rank in
future as great Powers, I was severely taken to
task by various critics. With the immeasurable
superiority, which, as is well-known, the judge
possesses over the culprit, they told me that these
were old-fashioned ideas, and that since the times
of the American War of Independence and the
founding of the Spanish colonies, the period of
colonization has come to an end. Such was the
general opinion in Germany in the days of the
Federal Diet. Meanwhile, England, not troubling
herself about the wisdom of our philosophical
historians, continued to extend her colonial empire
over half the world.
Since then, how strangely public sentiment has
changed! We now look out into the world with
other claims than formerly. Especially is this the
case with those Germans who live abroad, who
have a far livelier appreciation of the blessings of
the new empire than we at home. The uneasy
ferment of the last five years, although accom-
panied by the disintegration of ancient parties and
an abundance of wild animosity and ungrateful
fault-finding, has also given rise to some wholesome
self-criticism ; we have had our attention drawn to
our weaknesses, and begin to perceive in how many
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? German Colonization 205
respects we come short of worthily occupying the
position of a great nation.
During these last
years, without any pressure from authority, there
has risen from the people themselves a spontaneous
demand for German colonies with as much em-
phasis and confidence in the future as formerly
accompanied the demand for a German fleet.
Since F. Fabri first discussed the subject, a whole
literature on the colonial question has come into
existence. In the course of these discussions, the
Germans discovered, with joyful surprise, that,
outside official circles, we possessed a considerable
number of practical political writers, which can
console us for the increasing dreariness and im-
poverishment of our parliamentary life. By the
persistent endeavours of our brave travellers,
missionaries, and merchants, the first attempt at
German colonization has had the way prepared for
it, and been rendered possible. Germany's modest
gains on the African coast only aroused attention
in the world at large, because everyone knew that
they were not due, as in the case of the colonizing
experiments of the Electorate of Brandenburg, to
the bold idea of a great mind, but because a whole
nation greeted them with a joyful cry, "At last!
At last! "
For a nation that suffers from continual over-
production, and sends yearly 200,000 of her chil-
dren abroad, the question of colonization is vital.
During the first years which followed the restora-
tion of the German Empire, well-meaning people
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? 206 Treitschke
began to hope that the constant draining away
of German forces into foreign countries would
gradually cease, together with the political persecu-
tions, the discontent, and the petty domestic
coercive laws of the good old times. This hope
was disappointed, and was doomed to be so, for
those political grievances were not the only, nor
even the most important causes of German emigra-
tion. In the short time since the establishment of
the empire, the population has increased by a full
eighth, and this rapid growth, in spite of all the
misery which it involves, is nevertheless the
characteristic of a healthy national life, which, in
its careless consciousness of power, does not trouble
itself with the warnings of the "two-child system. "
It is true that Germany is as yet by no means
over-populated, least of all in those north-eastern
districts from which the stream of emigration
flows most strongly. Many of our emigrants, if
they exercised here the same untiring diligence
which inexorable necessity enforces on them in
America, could also prosper in their old fatherland.
But there are periods of domiciliation, and again
periods in which the impulse to wander works like
a dark, elementary power on the national spirit.
Just as the song "Eastwards! Eastwards! "once
rang seductively through the villages of Flanders, so
countless numbers dream now of the land of
marvels across the sea. And just as little as pru-
dential counsel could restrain the crusaders from
their sacred enterprise, so little can considerations
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? German Colonization 207
of reason prevail against the vague longing for the
West. It is also easy to calculate that our popula-
tion, provided its growth continues as before, must,
in no distant future, rise to a hundred millions and
more; then their fatherland would be too narrow
for the Germans, even if Prussia resumed the
colonization of its eastern borderlands in the old
Frederician style, and found room in the estates
there for thousands of peasants and long-lease
tenants. According to all appearance, German
emigration will still for a long while remain an
unavoidable necessity, and it becomes a new duty
for the motherland to take care that her wandering
children remain true to their nationality, and open
new channels for her commerce. This is in the
first place more important than our political con-
trol of the lands we colonize. A State, whose
frontiers march with those of three great Powers,
and whose seaboard lies open towards a fourth,
will generally only be able to carry on great na-
tional wars and must keep its chief military forces
carefully collected in Europe. The protection of a
remote, easily threatened colonial empire would
involve it in embarrassments and not strengthen
it.
And just now, after our good nature has striven
all too long not to be forced into the humiliating
confession, we are at last obliged to admit that
the German emigrants in North America are
completely lost to our State, and our nationality.
Set in the midst of a certainly less intellectual but
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? 208 Treitschke
commercially more energetic people, the nation-
ality of the German minority must inevitably be
suppressed by that of the majority, just as formerly
the French refugees were absorbed in Germany.
And as the expulsion of the Huguenots was for
France a huge misfortune, the effects of which are
still operative, so the German emigration to North
America is an absolute loss for our nation a
present given to a foreign country without any
equivalent compensation.
Moreover, for the general cause of civilization,
the Anglicizing of the German-Americans is a
heavy loss. Even the Frenchman, Leroy-Beaulieu,
confesses this with praiseworthy impartiality,
among Germans, there can be no question at all
but that human civilization suffers loss every
time that a German is turned into a Yankee.
All the touching proofs of faithful recollection
which the motherland has received from the
German-Americans since the year 1870, does not
alter the fact that all German emigrants, at latest
in the third generation, become Americans. Al-
though in certain districts of Pennsylvania, a
corrupt German dialect may survive side by side
with English, although some cultured families
may now, when German national consciousness is
everywhere stronger, perhaps be able to postpone
being completely Anglicized till the fourth genera-
tion, yet the political views of the emigrants are
inevitably coloured by the ideas prevalent in their
new home; in commerce, they even become our
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? German Colonization 209
enemies, and, voluntarily or involuntarily, help
to injure German agriculture by a depressing
rivalry. The overpowering force of their new cir-
cumstances compels them to divest themselves of
their nationality, until perhaps at last nothing is
left them but a platonic regard for German litera-
ture.
Therefore it is quite justifiable on the ground of
national self-preservation that the new German
Colonial Union should seek for ways and means to
divert the stream of German emigrants into lands
where they run no danger of losing their nation-
ality. Such a territory has been already found in
the south of Brazil. There, unassisted and some-
times not even suspected by the motherland, German
nationality remains quite intact for three genera-
tions, and our rapidly increasing export trade with
Porto Allegre shows that the commerce of the old
home profits greatly by the loyalty of her emigrant
children. Other such territories will also be dis-
covered if our nation enters with prudence and
boldness on the new era now opening to the colo-
nizing energy of Europeans.
With the crossing of Africa begins the last epoch
of great discoveries. When once the centre of the
Dark Continent lies open, the whole globe, with
the exception of a few regions which will be always
inaccessible to civilization, is also opened before
European eyes. The common interest of all
nations with the exception of England demands
that these new acquisitions of modern times should
14
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? 210 Treitschke
be dealt with in a more liberal, just, and humane
way than the former ones which only profited the
nations of the Iberian peninsula, in order finally
to ruin them. The summoning of the Congo con-
ference and our understanding with France show
that our Government knows how to estimate
properly the importance of this crisis. As a sea-
power of the second rank, Germany is in colonial
politics the natural representative of a humane
law of nations, and since England, now fully
occupied with Egyptian affairs, will hardly oppose
the united will of all the other Powers, there is
ground for hope that the conference will have a
happy issue and open the interior of Africa to the
free rivalry of all nations. Then it will be our
turn to show what we can do; in those remote
regions the power of the State can only follow the
free action of the nation and not precede it. In
this new world it must be seen whether the trivial
pedantry of an unfortunate past, after just now
celebrating its orgies in the struggle of the Hansa
towns against the national Customs Union, has at
last been overcome for ever, and whether the
German trader has enough self-confidence to
venture on rivalry with the predominant financial
strength of England.
The future will show whether the founding of
German agricultural colonies is possible in the
interior of Africa ; there will certainly be an oppor-
tunity for founding mercantile colonies which will
yield a rich return. After destiny has treated us
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? German Colonization 211
badly for so many centuries, we may well count for
once on the favour of fortune. In South Africa
also circumstances are decidedly favourable for us.
English colonial policy, which has been successful
everywhere else, has not been fortunate at the
Cape. The civilization which flourishes there is
Teutonic and Dutch. The attitude of England
wavering between weakness and violence, has
evoked among the brave Dutch Boers a deadly
ineradicable hatred. Moreover since the Dutch
have in the Indo-Chinese islands abundant scope
for their colonizing energy, it would only be a
natural turn of events, if their German kindred
should hereafter in some form or other, undertake
the protectorate of the Teutonic population of
South Africa, and succeed as heirs of the English
in a neglected colony which since the opening of the
Suez Canal has little more value for England.
If our nation dares decidedly to follow the new
path of an independent colonial policy, it will
inevitably become involved in a conflict of inter-
ests with England. . It lies in the nature of things
that the new great Power of central Europe must
come to an understanding with all the other great
Powers. We have already made our reckoning
with Austria, with France, and with Russia; 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.
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? Treitschke
[ow long has Germany in all seriousness believed
iis insular race, which among all the nations of
Europe is undoubtedly imbued with the most
marked national selfishness, whose greatness con-
sists precisely in its hard inaccessible one-sided-
ness, to be the magnanimous protector of the
freedom of all nationsTl Now at last our eyes
begin to be opened, aneHve recognize, what clear-
headed political thinkers have never doubted,
that England's State policy, since the days of
William III. , has never been anything else than a
remarkably shrewd and remarkably conscienceless
commercial policy. The extraordinary successes
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 the modern European nations, for
the shocking vampirism of this merchant-rule
sprang solely from greed; it cannot be excused,
as perhaps the acts of Philip II. or Robespierre
may be, by the fanaticism of a political conviction.
A still more serious factor in the situation is, that
owing to her transatlantic successes England has
lost her position as a European Great Power; in
negotiations on the continent her voice counts no
longer, and all the great changes which have
recently occurred in Central Europe took place
without England's participation, though for the
most part accompanied by impotent cries of rage
from the London press. The worst consequence,
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? German Colonization 213
however, of British commercial policy is the im-
mense and well- justified hatred which all nations
have gradually been conceiving towards England.
From the point of view of international law Eng-
land is to day the place where barbarism reigns;
it is England's fault alone that naval war is to day
only an organized piracy, and a humane maritime
international law cannot be established in the
world till a balance of power exists at sea as it
long has on land, and no State can dare any longer
to permit itself everything. English politicians
were never at a loss for philanthropic phrases
with which to cloak their commercial calculations;
at one time they alleged the necessity of maintain-
ing the balance of power in Europe, at another the
abolition of slavery, at another constitutional
freedom; and yet their national policy, like every
policy which aims at the unreasonable goal of
world supremacy always reckoned, as its founda-
tion principle, on the misfortunes of all other
nations.
England's commercial supremacy had its origin
in the discords on the continent, and owing to her
brilliant successes, which were often gained without
a struggle, there has grown up in the English
people a spirit of arrogance, for which "Chau-
vinism" 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
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? 216 Treitschke
atlantic world will have already learned that the
Germans to day no longer, as in Schiller's day,
escape from the stress of life into the still and holy
places of the heart.
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? TWO EMPERORS.
I5th June, 1888.
FOR the second time within a hundred days the
nation stands at the bier of its Emperor.
After the most fortunate of all her rulers, she la-
ments the most unfortunate. It seems as if in the
course of the history of our Emperors, not only im-
perial splendour was to have a new birth but the
tremendous tragic vicissitudes of fate were also
to be renewed. It was in very truth under the
guidance of God as he so often said in simple
humanity, that the Emperor William I reached
the pinnacle of universal fame, against all human
calculation and reckoning, and far beyond his
own hope. In his steady ascent, however, he
proved fully competent to each new and greater
task, till, arrived at the last limit of life, he ended
his days in a halo of glory. In death also he was
the effective uniter of the Germans, who, to the
accompaniment of the cannon-thunder of his
battles, had, for the first time after centuries,
known the happiness of joy at complete victories,
and now gathered round his funeral vault in the
unanimity of hallowed grief. During the years
when the character of a growing man usually
217
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? 218 Treitschke
takes its decisive bent, Prince Wilhelm could only
cherish the ambition, some day as his father 's or
brother* s Commander-in-Chief, to lead the armies
of Prussia to new victories. Himself almost the
youngest among the champions of the War of
Liberation, he shared with Gneisenau, with Clause-
witz, and all the political thinkers of the Prussian
Army the conviction that Germany's new western
frontier was as untenable as its loose confederation
of States, and that only a third Punic War could
finally decide the old struggle for power between
Gauls and Germans, and secure the independence
of the German State. All through the quiet
period of peace he held fast by this hope. As
early as the year 1840 he copied out in his own
handwriting Becker's song, "Our Rhine, free
German river, they ne'er shall take away," and
finished the last words, "Till the last brave Ger-
man warrior beneath its stream is laid," with that
bold flourish of the pen which afterwards in the
Emperor's signature became familiar to the whole
world. Hatred to the French was entirely absent
from his generous disposition, but more sagacious
than all the Prussian statesmen with the possible
exception of Motz, he early grasped the European
situation as it regarded Prussia and recognized
that the latter must grow in order to escape the
intolerable pressure of so many superior military
Powers. Thoroughly imbued with such thoughts,
and being every inch a soldier, he became in a few
years the favourite and the ideal of the Army,
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? Two Emperors 219
beloved for his friendly courtesy, and feared for
an official severity, which showed even the lowest
camp-follower that a careful and judicial eye was
watching him. He looked upon his people in arms
and their awakened intelligence with the undi-
minished enthusiasm of the War of Liberation,
but also with the more sober resolve to develop
singly the ideas of Scharnhorst and adapt them
to the changed times, so that this Army might
always remain the foremost. Outside, in the
smaller States, what was here undertaken in deep
political seriousness, was regarded as idle parade
display. The leaders of public opinion indulged
in radical dreams, expressed enthusiastic admira-
tion for Poles and Frenchmen and hoped for per-
petual peace. In the conceit of their superfine
culture they could not comprehend what the
Prince's simple martial thoroughness and devo-
tion to duty signified for the future of the Father-
land.
It was not till the reign of his brother, when the
"Prince of Prussia" had already to reckon with
the possibility of his own accession, that he engaged
in affairs of State. Like his father, he wished to
preserve the foundations of the ancient monar-
chical constitution unaltered. "Prussia shall not
cease to be Prussia. " Word for word he foretold
to his brother 1 what he was hereafter destined to
experience when the controversy regarding the re-
organization of the Army arose. The Diet, he said,
1 Frederick William IV.
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? 22O Treitschke
would misuse its right to control taxes in order to
weaken the power of the Army by shortening the
period of military service, and could, under the
plea of economy, easily deceive even the loyal.
His warning was disregarded, and, just as he had
once for the sake of the State sacrificed his youth-
ful love, so now he ceased to protest, as soon as the
King had made his decision on the subject. He
chivalrously stepped into the breach in the United
Diet, in order to divert towards himself all the
grudges which had collected against the throne
during that time of ferment.
Then came the storms of the Revolution period.
A mad hatred and huge misunderstanding were
discharged upon his head; only the Army which
knew him understood him. Round the bivouac
fires of the Prussian Guard in Schleswig-Holstein
they sang
"Prince of Prussia, bold and true,
Come back to thy troops anew,
Much beloved General! "
And when he returned from the exile which he had
undergone for his brother's sake, he accepted in
obedience to the King the new constitutional
regime. He gladly acknowledged what was right
and vital in the measure, of the Frankfort Parlia-
ment; but he would not sacrifice the privileges
of the German Princes and the strict monarchical
constitution of the Army to doctrinaire attempts
at innovation. The movement which had no
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