But the same
law holds good of nations as of individuals, who show less
differentiation in childhood than in mature years.
law holds good of nations as of individuals, who show less
differentiation in childhood than in mature years.
Treitschke - 1914 - Life and Works
org/access_use#pd-us-google
? RUSSIAN AND PRUSSIAN ALLIANCE 281
Prussian constitutional movement. The Czar Nicholas
did not merely behave as the head of the cause of royalty
in all Europe, but actually felt himself such; and it was
precisely this which secured him a strong following among
the Prussian Conservatives. It is far from my intention
to defend, in any way, the wretched policy which came
to grief at Warsaw and Olmiitz; we, the old Gotha
party, have all grown up as opponents of this tendency.
Meanwhile, after the lapse of a whole generation, it seems,
however, to be time to appreciate the natural motives
which drove so many valiant patriots into the Russian
camp. It is enough to remember only the King's ride
through mutinous Berlin, the retreat of the victorious
guards before the defeated barricade-fighters, and all the
terrible humiliation which the weakness of Frederick
William IV brought on the throne of the Hohenzollerns.
The old Prussian royalists felt as though the world were
coming to an end; they saw all that they counted most
venerable desecrated; and amid the universal chaos
the Czar Nicholas appeared to them to be the last stay
of Monarchy. Therefore, in order to save royalty in
Prussia they adhered to Russia. They made a grievous
error, but only blind hatred, as with our author, can con-
demn them abruptly as betrayers of their country. The
head of the pro-Russian party in Berlin was, at the begin-
ning of the 'fifties, the same Field-Marshal Dohna who
had instantly rejected with Prussian pride the above-
mentioned contemptible proposal of the Czar; of him a
diplomat said: "So long as this old standard remains
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? 282 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
upright, I feel easy. " Strongly Conservative in political
and ecclesiastical matters though he was, this son-in-law
of Scharnhorst had never surrendered the ideal of the
War of Liberation, the hope of German unity. What
brought the noble German into the ranks of the re-
actionists was certainly not regard for Russia, but that
hopeless confusion of our affairs which had brought about
such a close connection between the great cause of German
unity and the follies of the revolution; the Imperial
Crown of Frankfort seemed to him as to his King to be a
couronne de pavi.
As regards the Crimean War, all unprejudiced judges
believe, nowadays, that Prussia had, as an exception,
and for once in a way, undeserved good fortune. The
crushing superiority of Russia was broken by the Western
Powers without our interference, and yet our friendly
relations with our eastern neighbour, which were to be
so fruitful in results for Germany's future, remained
unbroken. Even a less undecided, less inactive govern-
ment than Manteuffel's Ministry could scarcely have
obtained a more favourable result than this. Our author
himself tepidly acknowledges that it was not Prussia's
duty to side with the Western Powers, and thus help on
the schemes of Bonapartism. A really brilliant states-
man perhaps might, as soon as the military forces of
France were locked up in the East, have suddenly made an
alliance with Russia, and attempted the conquest of
Schleswig-Holstein, and the solution of the German
question, without troubling himself about mistaken
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? RUSSIAN AND PRUSSIAN ALLIANCE 283
public opinion. But it is obvious how difficult this was,
and how impossible for a personality like the King's.
Instead of quietly appreciating the difficulty of the
circumstances, our author only vehemently denounces
Russia's pride and Prussia's servility. He also again
ignores the fact that Prussia then, unfortunately, had
fallen into a state of being regarded as negligible by the
whole world, and the arrogance of the Western Powers
was not less than that of Russia. Everyone knows the
letters of Prince Albert, and Napoleon III's remark,
regarding the deference which Prussia showed towards
Russia; the cold, disparaging contempt displayed in
the letters of the Prince Consort, who was himself a
German, and accustomed to weigh his words carefully,
is, in my opinion, more insulting than the coarse words of
abuse which the harsh despotic Nicholas is said to have
blurted out in moments of sudden anger. Our author
also ignores the fact that the Czar Nicholas declared
himself ready to purchase Prussia's help in the field by
surrendering Warsaw. In the camp of the English
and French allies they were willing to pay a price also,
but only offered a slight rectification of the frontier on
the left bank of the Rhine. Which of the offers was the
more favourable?
This whole section of the book is a mixture of truth
and falsehood, of ingenious remarks and tasteless gossip.
We will give one specimen of the author's manner of
relating history. He prints in spaced letters the following:
"In February, 1854, a Prussian State secret--the just
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? 284 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
completed plan of mobilisation--was revealed to the Court
of St. Petersburg. " Then he relates how one of our
noblest patriots, a well-known writer, conveyed the news
of this betrayal, of course in perfect good faith, to a Berlin
lithographic correspondence agency; and in consequence
a secret order was issued for the writer's arrest. I happen
to be exactly acquainted with the affair, and can confirm
the statement that the order for arrest was certainly
issued--a characteristic occurrence in that time of petty
panics on the part of the police. But more important
than this secondary matter is the question whether
that piece of information was reliable, and whether that
betrayal really took place. The author has here again
concealed something. The report was that a brother of
the King had committed the treachery. This remarkable
disclosure, however, did not originate with anyone who
was really conversant with affairs, but with an honourable,
though at the same time very credulous and hot-headed,
Liberal deputy of the Landtag,* who had nothing to do
with the Court. Is it exaggerated loyalty when we
Prussians demand from the Baltic anonymous author
at least some attempt at a proof, before we resolve to
regard one of our royal princes as a traitor to his country?
The story simply belongs to the series of innumerable
scandals which were only too gladly believed by the
malicious Liberalism of the 'fifties. It was, we must
remember, the time when Varnhagen von Ense was
flourishing. In accordance with the general tenor of his
? Parliament of a single State.
^
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? RUSSIAN AND PRUSSIAN ALLIANCE 285
book the author naturally does not relish the indisput-
able fact that the policy of Alexander II atoned for
many of the wrongs which the Czar Nicholas had
committed against Germany. He seeks rather, during
this period of Russian history, to hunt up every trace of
movements hostile to Germany. It is, for instance, a
well-known fact that, after the Peace of Paris, Russia
sought for a rapprochement to France; and it may also
be safely assumed that Prince Gortschakoff, from the
commencement of his political career, regarded an alli-
ance with France as the most suitable for Russia. But it
is a long way from such general wishes to the acts of State-
policy. For whole decades the great majority of French
statesmen, without distinction of party, have given a lip-
adherence to the Russian Alliance; even Lamartine,
the enthusiast for freedom, spoke of this alliance as a
geographical necessity and the "cry of nature. " And
yet the course of the world's history went another way.
Then came the Polish rising of 1863. The Court of
St. Petersburg learned to know thoroughly the secret
intrigues of Bonapartism, and in Prussia's watchful
aid found a proof of the value of German friendship.
Since then, for a whole decade, its attitude has remained
favourable to our interests, whatever fault the Baltic
anonymous author may find in details. Certainly it
was only the will of one man which gave this direction
to Russian policy. The Russo-Prussian Alliance has
never denied its origin; it has never evoked a warm
friendship between the two nations; while the great
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? 286 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
majority of Germans regarded Russian affairs with com-
plete indifference, there awoke in the educated circles of
Russian society, as soon as the great decisive days of our
history approached, a bitter hatred against Germany,
which increased from year to year. But that one will,
which was friendly to us, governed the German State;
and so long as this condition lasted the intelligent German
Press was bound to treat the neighbouring Power with
forbearance. When the Baltic author expresses contempt
for our Press because of this, and blames it for want of
national pride, he merely shows that he has no compre-
hension for the first and most important tasks of German
policy. His thoughts continually revolve round Reval,
Riga, and Mitau.
That the dislocation of the equilibrium among the
Baltic Powers and the advance of Prussia in the Cimbric
Peninsula must have appeared serious matters to the St.
Petersburg Court is obvious. But at last it let the old
deeply-rooted tradition drop, and accommodated itself
with as good a grace as possible to the fait accompli.
Similarly it is evident that the formation of the North
German Confederation could not be agreeable to it.
When the war of 1866 broke out people at St. Petersburg
and all the other capitals of Europe expected the probable
defeat of Prussia, and at first were seriously alarmed at
the brilliant successes of our troops. But this time also
a sense of fairness prevailed. The Czar Alexander
accepted the new order of things in Germany as soon as
he ascertained what schemes were cherished by the
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? RUSSIAN AND PRUSSIAN ALLIANCE 287
Court of the Tuileries against the left bank of the Rhine.
In the next year (1870) this attitude of our friend and
neighbour underwent its severest test. Austria, Italy,
and Denmark, as is well known, were on the point of
concluding an alliance against Germany when the victories
of Worth and Spicheren intervened. England did not
dare to forbid the French to make the attack, which a
single word from the Queen of the Seas could have pre-
vented, and afterwards she prolonged the war by her
sale of arms and by the one-sided manner in which she
maintained her neutrality. The Czar Alexander, on the
other hand, greeted each victory of his royal uncle with
sincere joy. That was the important point, and not
the ill-humour of Prince Gortschakoff which our author
depicts with so much satisfaction. Russia was the only
Great Power whose head displayed friendly sentiments
towards us during that difficult time. And if we wish to
realise how valuable Russian friendship was for us
also in the following years, we must compare the present
state of things with the past. As long as the alliance of
the three Emperors lasted a European war was quite
out of the question, for the notorious war crisis of 1875
has in reality never existed. Since Russia has separated
from the other two Imperial Powers we are at any rate
within sight of the possibility of a European war, and may
perhaps be suddenly compelled to act on two frontiers
simultaneously.
The most welcome task for an author who openly
preaches war against Russia was obviously to show in
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? 288 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
detail through what circumstances the old alliance after
the Peace of San Stefano was loosened and finally
dissolved. I know no more of these matters than anyone
else. I only know that in Russia there is deep vexation
at the course taken by the Berlin Congress, and that a
great deal of the blame is imputed to the German Empire.
I have heard of secret negotiations regarding a Franco-
Russian Alliance, and am without further argument
convinced that Prince Bismarck would not have given
German policy its latest direction without very solid
reasons. But I have no more exact knowledge of the
matter. Therefore it was with easily intelligible curiosity
that I began to read the last section of the book. I
hoped to learn something about the transactions between
Russia and France; I hoped to learn whether the senti-
ments of the Czar Alexander have changed, or whether
the monarch does not now more personally direct
the foreign policy of his kingdom, etc. But our author
himself knows nothing about such matters; he deceives
himself or others when he pretends to be initiated. He
only produces lengthy extracts from the Germanophobe
articles of the Russian Press. Every publicist who is
at all an expert knows just as many fine and pithy
passages in Muscovite papers. In Hansen's "Coulisses
de la diplomatic " the author, who loves historical sources
of this kind, might discover similar outpourings of
Russian politicians. But all that proves very little.
The question is much rather whether the Russian Press,
which, as is well known, only enjoys a certain degree of
\
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? RUSSIAN AND PRUSSIAN ALLIANCE 289
freedom in the two capitals and remains quite unknown
to the mass of the people, is powerful enough to influence
the course of Russia's foreign policy. To this question
the author gives no answer.
So we lay the book aside without any information on
the present state of affairs, but not without a feeling of
shame. When two who have been friends for many
years have broken with each other, it is not only unchival-
rous for one to tax his old companions with sins com-
mitted long ago, but unwise; the reproach always
falls back on the reproacher. The last impression which
the reader carries away from this work is much more
unfavourable for Prussia than for Russia; therefore even
the foreign Press greeted it at once with well-deserved
contempt. Anyone who believes the author must
come to the conclusion that King Frederick William III
and his two successors had conducted a Russian and not
a Prussian policy. Happily this view is quite false.
But we would remind the Baltic publicist, who, under the
disguise of a Prussian patriot, draws such a nattering
picture of our history, of an old Prussian story which still
has its application. In the Rhine campaign of 1793 a
Prussian grenadier was inveighing vigorously against
King Frederick William II; but when an Austrian fellow-
soldier chimed in the Prussian gave him a box on the ear
and said, "/ may talk like that, but not you; for I am a
Prussian. "
The author's remarks on the future are based upon the
tacit assumption that the European Powers fall naturally
T
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? 2go TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
into two groups--Austria, England, and Germany on the
one side, Italy, Russia, and France on the other. In the
short time since the book came out this assumption has
already been made void; the English elections have
reminded the world very forcibly of the instability of
grouping in the system of States. If the author had
commenced his work only four weeks later it would
probably not have appeared in the book market at all or
have done so in a very different shape.
But there is one truth, though certainly no new one,
in the train of thought which is apparent in this book;
it is only too correct that hostility to everything German
is constantly on the increase in influential Russian society.
But we do not at all believe that an intelligent Russian
Government, not misled by the dreams of Pan-slavism,
must necessarily cherish such a feeling towards us. We
regard a war against Russia as a great calamity, for who,
now, when the period of colonising absolutism lies far
behind us, can seriously wish to encumber our State with
the possession of Warsaw, and with millions of Poles and
Jews? But many signs indicate that the next great
European crisis will find the Russians in the ranks of
our enemies. All the more important therefore is our
newly-confirmed friendship with Austria.
This alliance is, as a matter of course, sure of the
involuntary sympathy of our people; if it endures it
may have the useful effect of strengthening the German
element in Austria, and finally checking the melancholy
decay of our civilisation in Bohemia and Hungary, in
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? RUSSIAN AND PRUSSIAN ALLIANCE 291
Krain and the Tyrol. Our interests in the East coincide,
for the present, with those of the Danube Empire. After
the occupation of Bosnia has once taken place Austria
cannot again surrender the position she has taken up,
without preparing a triumph for our common enemy,
Pan-slavism. Nevertheless, we cannot join our Baltic J
author in prophesying that the treaty of friendship with
Austria will be as lasting and immovable as the unity
of the German Empire. Germany has plenty of enemies
in the medley of peoples which exist in Austria: all
the Slavs, even the ultramontane Germans, hate us;
nay, more, the Magyars, our political friends, suppress
German civilisation in the Saxon districts of Transylvania
much more severely than the Russians ever ventured to
do in their Baltic provinces. It is not in our power to keep
these hostile forces for ever aloof from the guidance
of Russia. The unity of our Empire, on the other hand,
rests on our own power alone, and on the loyalty which
we owe to ourselves; therefore it will last, whatever
changes may take place among the European alliances.
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? FREEDOM.
When shall we see the last of those timid spirits who
find it needful to increase the burden of life by self-
created torture, to whom every advance of the human
mind is but one sign more of the decay of our race--of the
approach of the Day of Judgment? The great majority
of our contemporaries are again beginning, thank
Heaven! to believe quite sturdily and heartily in
themselves; yet we are weak enough to repeat some, at
least, of the gloomy predictions of those atrabilious
spirits. It has become a commonplace assumption
that all-conquering culture will at last supplant national
morality by a morality of mankind, and transform the
world into a cosmopolitan, primitive pap.
But the same
law holds good of nations as of individuals, who show less
differentiation in childhood than in mature years. In
other words, if a people has vitality enough to keep itself
and its nationality going in the merciless race-struggle
of history, every advance in civilisation will certainly
bring its external life in closer contact with other peoples,
but it will bring into clearer relief its more refined, its
deeper idiosyncrasies. We all follow the Paris fashions,
we are linked with neighbouring nations, by a thousand
292
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? FREEDOM 293
different interests; yet our feelings and ideas, so far as
the French and British intellectual world is concerned,
are undoubtedly more independent than they were
seven hundred years ago, when the peasant all over
Europe spent his life fettered by patriarchal custom,
whilst the ecclesiastic in every country derived his
knowledge from the same sources, and the nobility of
Latin Christendom created for itself a common code of
honour and morality under the walls of Jerusalem.
That lively exchange of ideas between nations, on which
the present generation rightly plumes itself, has never
been a mere give-and-take.
We are fortified in this consoling knowledge when we
see how the ideas of a German classic about the highest
object of human thought--about freedom--have recently
been developed in a very individual way by two dis-
tinguished political thinkers of France and England.
When Wilhelm von Humboldt's essay on the limits of
the operations of the State appeared for the first time
in complete form a few years ago, some sensation was
caused by that brilliant work in Germany too. We were
rejoiced to get a deeper insight into the evolution of one
of our chief men. The more refined minds delightedly
detected the inspiring breath of the Golden Age of German
humanity, for it is indeed only in Schiller's nearly-related
letters on the aesthetic education of the human race that
the bright ideal of a beautiful humanity, which fascinated
Germans during that period, has been depicted with
equal eloquence and distinction. The gifted youth who
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? 294 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
had just had his first look into the self-complacent red-
tapeism of Frederick William IPs bureaucracy, and had
turned away, chilled by its lifeless formalities, in order
to live a life of aesthetic leisure at home--he was certainly
to be forgiven for thinking very poorly of the State.
Dalberg had asked him to write the little book--a prince
who had the intention of lavishing profusely on his country
all the good things of life by means of an administration
that would know everything and look after everything.
The young thinker emphasized all the more keenly the
fact that the State is nothing but an institution for pur-
poses of security; that it must never again interfere
directly or indirectly with a nation's morals or character;
that a man was freest when the State was least active.
We, of the present generation, know only too well that
the true cause of the ruin of the old German State was
that all free minds set themselves in such morbid opposi-
tion to the State that they fled from it like young
Humboldt, instead of serving it like Humboldt when
grown to a man, and elevating it by the nobility of their
free human development. The doctrine which sees in
the State merely a hindrance, a necessary evil, seems
obsolete to the German of to-day. Curiously enough,
though, this youthful work of Humboldt's is now being
glorified by John Stuart Mill in his book on liberty,
and by Edward Laboulaye in his essay " L'? tat et ses
limites," as a mine of political wisdom for the troubles
of the present time.
Mill is a faithful son of those genuinely German middle
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? FREEDOM 295
classes of England, which, since the days of Richard II
have preferentially represented our country's inner essence,
its spiritual work, both in good and bad respects, both by
an earnest desire for truth and by a gloomy, fanatical zeal
in religious belief. He has become a rich man since he
discovered and recognised the most precious jewel of
our people, German idealism. Speaking from that free
watch-tower he utters words of reproach, bitter words,
against his fellow-countrymen's confused thinking; and
unfortunately, also, against the present generation, bitter
words such as only the honoured national economist
would dare to speak unpunished. But, like a true-born
Englishman, as a pupil of Bentham, he tests Kant's ideas
by the standard of the useful, the " well-comprehended,
permanent" utility of course, and therein shows in his
own person the deep abyss which will always separate
the two nations' intellectual activities. He wavers
between the English and German views of the world--
in his book on liberty, just as in his latest work,
"Utilitarianism "--and finally gets out of the difficulty
by attributing an ideal meaning to Bentham's purely
materialistic thoughts, which brings them close to the
German view. With the help of the apostle of German
humanity he contrives to praise the North American
State-methods, which owe little, or nothing, to the beauti-
ful humanity of German-Hellenic classicism. Laboulaye,
on the other hand, belongs to that small school of keen-
sighted Liberals, which feels the weakness of their country
to reside in French centralisation, and endeavours to
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? 296 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
re-awaken the germs of German civilisation which are
there slumbering under the Celtic-Roman regime. The
talented author deals with historical facts, rather boldly
than thoroughly; briefly, he is of opinion that Christianity
was the first to recognise the worth and dignity of the
individual. Well, then, our glorious heathen Humboldt
must be a downright Christian philosopher, and with
the nineteenth century the age must be approaching
when the ideas of Christianity shall be completely realised,
and the individual, not the State, shall rule. The French-
man will only convince a small group of believers among
bis numerous readers. Mill's book, on the other hand,
has been received with the greatest applause by his fellow-
countrymen. They have called it the gospel of the nine-
teenth century. As a fact, both works stiike notes which
have a mighty echo in the heart of every modern man;
it is therefore instructive to investigate whether they
really expound the principles of genuine freedom.
Although we have learnt to assign a deeper foundation
and a richer meaning to the words of the Greek philo-
sopher, no thinker has surpassed the interpretation of
freedom which Aristotle discovered. He thinks, in his
exhaustive, empirical way, that freedom embraces
two things: the suitability of the citizens to live
as they prefer, and the sharing of the citizens in
the State-government (ruling, and at the same time
being ruled). That one-sidedness, which is the lever of
all human progress, brought it about that the nations
have hardly ever aspired to the full conception of freedom.
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? FREEDOM 297
It is, on the contrary, well known that the Greeks
preferred political freedom in a narrower sense, and
readily sacrificed the free activity of the individual to
a beautiful and sound existence as a community. The
love of political liberty on the part of the ancients
was certainly by no means so exclusive as is generally
believed. That definition of the Greek thinker proves
that they were by no means lacking in the comprehension
of a life lived after its own will and pleasure, of civic,
personal freedom. Aristotle knows very well that a
State-administration is even thinkable which does not
include the national life, taken in sum; he expressly
declares that States are particularly distinguished from
each other, by the question whether everything, or nothing,
or how much is shared by the citizens. At any rate, the
idea was dominant in the mature State of antiquity
that the citizen is only a part of the State, that true virtue
is realised only in the State. Political thinkers among
the ancients, therefore, occupy themselves solely with the
questions: Who shall rule in the State? and, How shall
the State be protected? Only occasionally, as a slight
misgiving, is the deeper question stirred: How shall
the citizen be protected from the State? The ancients
were assured that a power which a people exercises over
itself needs no limitation. How different are the German
conceptions of freedom, which lay chief emphasis on the
unlimited right of personality! In the Middle Age the
State began everywhere, with an implacable combat of
the State-power against the desire for independence on
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? 298 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
the part of individuals, guilds, classes, which was
hostile to the State; and we Germans experienced in our
own persons with what loss of power and genuine
freedom the libcrtat of the minor princes, the
"freedoms of the honourable classes" were bought.
If, at length, in the course of this struggle, which in later
times was gloriously settled by an absolute Monarchy,
the majesty, the unity of the State was preserved, a
transformation would take place in the people's ideas of
freedom, and a fresh quarrel would start. No longer
is the attempt made to separate the individual from a
State-power whose necessity has been understood. But
there is a demand that the State-power should not be
independent of the people; it should become an actual
popular administration, working within established
forms, and bound by the will of the majority of the
citizens.
Everybody knows how immeasurably far from that
goal our Fatherland still is. What Vittorio Alfieri
proposed to himself as his object in life nearly a hundred
years ago:
"Di far con penna ai falsi imperj offesa,"
is still a difficult, toilsome task for the Germans. On
the Fulda, on the Leine, and probably also on the
Spree, a pusillanimous German might even to-day repeat
Alfieri's question: Ought a man who is steeped in the
feeling of civism to take the responsibility of bringing
children into the world under the yoke of a tyranny?
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? FREEDOM 299
Ought he to generate beings who, the more sensitive
their conscience the stronger their sense of justice, are
bound to suffer the more severely beneath that perversion
of all ideas of honour, justice, and shame, whereby a
tyranny poisons a people? What, however, Alfieri
himself experienced did not happen in the case of the
peoples. When, having reached grown-up age, he
published the savage pamphlet "On Tyranny," which
he had once written in holy zeal as a youth, he was
obliged himself to confess: To-day I should be wanting
in the courage, or, more correctly speaking, the fury,
which was requisite for the authorship of such a book.
The nations to-day regard with similar feelings the
abstract hatred of tyrants of the past century. We no
longer ask: "Come si debbe morire nella tirannide,"
but we stand with determined, invincible confidence
in the midst of the fight for political freedom, the result
of which has for a long time not been in question. For
the common lot of everything human has dominated
this struggle too, and this time, also, the thoughts of the
nations largely anticipated actual conditions. How poor
in vitality, in fruitfulness, are the partisans of absolutism
when confronted with the people's demand for freedom!
When two mighty streams of thought dash roaring at
one another, a new middle-stream quietly separates at
last from the wild confusion. Nay, rather, a stream rages
against a strong breakwater and makes itself a way
through thousands and thousands of fissures. Every-
thing new that this nineteenth century has provided is
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? 300 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
the work of Liberalism. The foes of freedom are only
able to utter a cool negative, or to revive the ideas of long-
forgotten days so that they may seem alive again, or
finally they borrow the weapons of their opponents.
In the tribunals of our Chambers, by means of the
free Press, which they owe the Liberals, by means of
catchwords which they overhear from their adversaries,
they are championing principles which, if put in opera-
tion, would be bound to annihilate all the freedom of
the Press, all Parliamentary life.
Everywhere, even in classes which fifty years ago
were still closed to all political ideas, there is a calm and
firm belief in the truth of those great words, which,
with their deliberate definiteness, mark the boundary
of a new period; belief in the words of the American
Declaration of Independence: "The just powers of
governments are derived from the consent of the
governed. " So indisputable is this idea to modern
men that even Gentz had reluctantly to agree with
the detested protagonists of freedom when he said that
the State-power could only claim sacrifices from the
citizen so long as the latter could call the State his
State. And these problems of freedom are so old, so
thoroughly examined in all their aspects, so near a
decisive issue, that as regards most of them a concilia-
tion and purgation of opinions has already been achieved.
It was at last understood that the fight for political
freedom is not a dispute between Republic and Monarchy,
because the people's " ruling and at the same time being
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? FREEDOM 301
ruled " is equally realisable in both forms of the State.
Only one single corollary of political freedom is even
to-day the cause of embittered, passionate discussion.
If, namely, the people's moral consciousness is in very
truth the final, just foundation of the State, if in very
truth the people rules according to its own will, and for
its own happiness, a longing for the national isolation
of the State arises of its own accord. Because it is
only where the vital, unquestioning consciousness of
belonging together permeates all members of the State
that the State is what it ought to be, according to its
nature, an organised people in unity. Thence the desire
to exclude foreign elements, and, in divided nations,
the impulse to get rid of the smaller of the two " father-
lands. " It is not our intention to describe to how many
necessary limitations this political liberty is subject.
Suffice it that there is everywhere a demand for the
government of the peoples in harmony with their will;
it is more general and uniform than ever before in history,
and will at last be as surely satisfied as the peoples'
existence is more permanent, more justified, and stronger
than the life of their powerful opponents.
However, let us look things in the face, let us con-
sider how entirely our ideas of freedom have changed
in this Protean fight in which we ourselves are spec-
tators and actors. We no longer meet the problems of
freedom with the overbearingness, with the vague
enthusiasm of youth. Political freedom is freedom
politically limited--this phrase, which was blamed as
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? 302 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
servile even a few decades ago, is to-day admitted by
everybody capable of political judgment. And how
ruthlessly has harsh experience destroyed all those mad
ideas which hid themselves behind the great name of
Liberty! The ideas of freedom which prevailed during
the French Revolution were a vague blend of Mon-
tesquieu's ideas and Rousseau's half-antique conception.
The construction of political liberty was believed to be
complete if only the legislative power were separated
from the executive and the judicial, and every citizen
were, on equal terms, to help in electing the deputies
of the National Convention. Those demands were
fulfilled, most abundantly fulfilled, and what was the
end of it all? The most disgusting despotism Europe
ever saw. The idolatry which our Radicals displayed
all too long for the horrors of the Convention is at last
beginning to die out in the presence of the trifling reflec-
tion: If an all-mighty State-power forbids me to open
my mouth, compels me to belie my faith, and guillotines
me as soon as I defy such insolence, it is a matter of
perfect indifference whether that tyranny is exercised
by a hereditary prince or by a Convention; both the one
and the other is slavery. But the fallacy in Rousseau's
maxim that, where all are equal, each one obeys himself,
seems really too obvious. It is much truer that he
obeys the majority, and what is to prevent that majority
from behaving quite as tyrannously as an unscrupulous
monarch?
If we consider the feverish convulsions which have
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? FREEDOM 303
shaken for seventy years the nation on the other side
of the Rhine (which is, despite all, a great nation), we
are ashamed to find that the French, in spite of all their
enthusiasm for liberty, have only known equality, and
never freedom. But equality is a shallow idea, which
may as well signify an equal slavery of all as an equal
freedom of all. And it certainly means the former
when it is aspired to by a people as the sole, highest
political good. The highest conceivable degree of
equality--communism--is the highest conceivable degree
of serfdom, because it assumes the suppression of all
natural inclinations. Assuredly, it is not an accident
that the passionate impulse for equality is especially
rife in that people, whose Celtic blood is ever and ever
again finding pleasure in flocking, in blind subjection,
round a great Cassarean figure, whether his name be
Vercingetorix, Louis XIV, or Napoleon. We Germans
insist too proudly on the limitless right of the individual
for us to be able to discover freedom in universal suffrage;
we reflect that even in several Ecclesiastical Orders
the heads are chosen by universal suffrage; but who
in the wide world has ever sought for freedom in a con-
vent? Truly it is not the spirit of liberty which speaks
in Lamartine's declaration, in the year 1848: "Every
Frenchman is an elector, therefore a self-ruler; no
Frenchman can say to another, 'You are more a ruler
than I. '" What instinct of mankind is gratified by
such words? None other than the meanest of all--
envy I Even Rousseau's enthusiasm for the civism of
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? 304 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
the ancients will not stand serious examination. The
civic glory of Athens rested on the broad substratum
of slavery, of contempt for all economic activities; whilst
we moderns base our fame on respect for all men, on
our acknowledgment of the nobility of labour. The
most bigoted aristocrat in the modern world seems like
a democrat by comparison with that Aristotle who
coolly lays it down with horrible hardness of heart:
"It is not possible for a man who lives the life of a
manual labourer to practise works of virtue. "
Deeper natures were impelled, long ago, by such con-
siderations to examine more carefully on what prin-
ciples the much-envied freedom of the Britons rests.
They found that in that country no all-powerful govern-
ment determines the destinies of the most remote
communities, but every county, however small, is
administered by itself. This acknowledgment of the
blessings of self-government was an extraordinary
advance; for the enervating influence on the citizens
of a State that looks after everything can hardly be
depicted in sufficiently dark colours; it is, therefore, so
uncanny, because a morbid state of the people is only
revealed in its full extent in a later generation. So long
as the eye of the great Frederick watched over his Prus-
sians, a simple glance at the hero raised even small
souls above their standard; his vigilance was a spur to
the sluggards. But when he passed away he left a
generation without a will, accustomed--as Napoleon III
boasts of bis Frenchmen--to expect from the State all
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? FREEDOM 305
incitement to action, disposed to that vanity which
is the opposite of real national pride, capable on occasion
of breaking out in fleeting enthusiasm for the idea of
State-unity, but incapable of commanding itself--
incapable of the greatest task which is laid upon modern
nations.
? RUSSIAN AND PRUSSIAN ALLIANCE 281
Prussian constitutional movement. The Czar Nicholas
did not merely behave as the head of the cause of royalty
in all Europe, but actually felt himself such; and it was
precisely this which secured him a strong following among
the Prussian Conservatives. It is far from my intention
to defend, in any way, the wretched policy which came
to grief at Warsaw and Olmiitz; we, the old Gotha
party, have all grown up as opponents of this tendency.
Meanwhile, after the lapse of a whole generation, it seems,
however, to be time to appreciate the natural motives
which drove so many valiant patriots into the Russian
camp. It is enough to remember only the King's ride
through mutinous Berlin, the retreat of the victorious
guards before the defeated barricade-fighters, and all the
terrible humiliation which the weakness of Frederick
William IV brought on the throne of the Hohenzollerns.
The old Prussian royalists felt as though the world were
coming to an end; they saw all that they counted most
venerable desecrated; and amid the universal chaos
the Czar Nicholas appeared to them to be the last stay
of Monarchy. Therefore, in order to save royalty in
Prussia they adhered to Russia. They made a grievous
error, but only blind hatred, as with our author, can con-
demn them abruptly as betrayers of their country. The
head of the pro-Russian party in Berlin was, at the begin-
ning of the 'fifties, the same Field-Marshal Dohna who
had instantly rejected with Prussian pride the above-
mentioned contemptible proposal of the Czar; of him a
diplomat said: "So long as this old standard remains
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? 282 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
upright, I feel easy. " Strongly Conservative in political
and ecclesiastical matters though he was, this son-in-law
of Scharnhorst had never surrendered the ideal of the
War of Liberation, the hope of German unity. What
brought the noble German into the ranks of the re-
actionists was certainly not regard for Russia, but that
hopeless confusion of our affairs which had brought about
such a close connection between the great cause of German
unity and the follies of the revolution; the Imperial
Crown of Frankfort seemed to him as to his King to be a
couronne de pavi.
As regards the Crimean War, all unprejudiced judges
believe, nowadays, that Prussia had, as an exception,
and for once in a way, undeserved good fortune. The
crushing superiority of Russia was broken by the Western
Powers without our interference, and yet our friendly
relations with our eastern neighbour, which were to be
so fruitful in results for Germany's future, remained
unbroken. Even a less undecided, less inactive govern-
ment than Manteuffel's Ministry could scarcely have
obtained a more favourable result than this. Our author
himself tepidly acknowledges that it was not Prussia's
duty to side with the Western Powers, and thus help on
the schemes of Bonapartism. A really brilliant states-
man perhaps might, as soon as the military forces of
France were locked up in the East, have suddenly made an
alliance with Russia, and attempted the conquest of
Schleswig-Holstein, and the solution of the German
question, without troubling himself about mistaken
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? RUSSIAN AND PRUSSIAN ALLIANCE 283
public opinion. But it is obvious how difficult this was,
and how impossible for a personality like the King's.
Instead of quietly appreciating the difficulty of the
circumstances, our author only vehemently denounces
Russia's pride and Prussia's servility. He also again
ignores the fact that Prussia then, unfortunately, had
fallen into a state of being regarded as negligible by the
whole world, and the arrogance of the Western Powers
was not less than that of Russia. Everyone knows the
letters of Prince Albert, and Napoleon III's remark,
regarding the deference which Prussia showed towards
Russia; the cold, disparaging contempt displayed in
the letters of the Prince Consort, who was himself a
German, and accustomed to weigh his words carefully,
is, in my opinion, more insulting than the coarse words of
abuse which the harsh despotic Nicholas is said to have
blurted out in moments of sudden anger. Our author
also ignores the fact that the Czar Nicholas declared
himself ready to purchase Prussia's help in the field by
surrendering Warsaw. In the camp of the English
and French allies they were willing to pay a price also,
but only offered a slight rectification of the frontier on
the left bank of the Rhine. Which of the offers was the
more favourable?
This whole section of the book is a mixture of truth
and falsehood, of ingenious remarks and tasteless gossip.
We will give one specimen of the author's manner of
relating history. He prints in spaced letters the following:
"In February, 1854, a Prussian State secret--the just
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? 284 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
completed plan of mobilisation--was revealed to the Court
of St. Petersburg. " Then he relates how one of our
noblest patriots, a well-known writer, conveyed the news
of this betrayal, of course in perfect good faith, to a Berlin
lithographic correspondence agency; and in consequence
a secret order was issued for the writer's arrest. I happen
to be exactly acquainted with the affair, and can confirm
the statement that the order for arrest was certainly
issued--a characteristic occurrence in that time of petty
panics on the part of the police. But more important
than this secondary matter is the question whether
that piece of information was reliable, and whether that
betrayal really took place. The author has here again
concealed something. The report was that a brother of
the King had committed the treachery. This remarkable
disclosure, however, did not originate with anyone who
was really conversant with affairs, but with an honourable,
though at the same time very credulous and hot-headed,
Liberal deputy of the Landtag,* who had nothing to do
with the Court. Is it exaggerated loyalty when we
Prussians demand from the Baltic anonymous author
at least some attempt at a proof, before we resolve to
regard one of our royal princes as a traitor to his country?
The story simply belongs to the series of innumerable
scandals which were only too gladly believed by the
malicious Liberalism of the 'fifties. It was, we must
remember, the time when Varnhagen von Ense was
flourishing. In accordance with the general tenor of his
? Parliament of a single State.
^
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? RUSSIAN AND PRUSSIAN ALLIANCE 285
book the author naturally does not relish the indisput-
able fact that the policy of Alexander II atoned for
many of the wrongs which the Czar Nicholas had
committed against Germany. He seeks rather, during
this period of Russian history, to hunt up every trace of
movements hostile to Germany. It is, for instance, a
well-known fact that, after the Peace of Paris, Russia
sought for a rapprochement to France; and it may also
be safely assumed that Prince Gortschakoff, from the
commencement of his political career, regarded an alli-
ance with France as the most suitable for Russia. But it
is a long way from such general wishes to the acts of State-
policy. For whole decades the great majority of French
statesmen, without distinction of party, have given a lip-
adherence to the Russian Alliance; even Lamartine,
the enthusiast for freedom, spoke of this alliance as a
geographical necessity and the "cry of nature. " And
yet the course of the world's history went another way.
Then came the Polish rising of 1863. The Court of
St. Petersburg learned to know thoroughly the secret
intrigues of Bonapartism, and in Prussia's watchful
aid found a proof of the value of German friendship.
Since then, for a whole decade, its attitude has remained
favourable to our interests, whatever fault the Baltic
anonymous author may find in details. Certainly it
was only the will of one man which gave this direction
to Russian policy. The Russo-Prussian Alliance has
never denied its origin; it has never evoked a warm
friendship between the two nations; while the great
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? 286 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
majority of Germans regarded Russian affairs with com-
plete indifference, there awoke in the educated circles of
Russian society, as soon as the great decisive days of our
history approached, a bitter hatred against Germany,
which increased from year to year. But that one will,
which was friendly to us, governed the German State;
and so long as this condition lasted the intelligent German
Press was bound to treat the neighbouring Power with
forbearance. When the Baltic author expresses contempt
for our Press because of this, and blames it for want of
national pride, he merely shows that he has no compre-
hension for the first and most important tasks of German
policy. His thoughts continually revolve round Reval,
Riga, and Mitau.
That the dislocation of the equilibrium among the
Baltic Powers and the advance of Prussia in the Cimbric
Peninsula must have appeared serious matters to the St.
Petersburg Court is obvious. But at last it let the old
deeply-rooted tradition drop, and accommodated itself
with as good a grace as possible to the fait accompli.
Similarly it is evident that the formation of the North
German Confederation could not be agreeable to it.
When the war of 1866 broke out people at St. Petersburg
and all the other capitals of Europe expected the probable
defeat of Prussia, and at first were seriously alarmed at
the brilliant successes of our troops. But this time also
a sense of fairness prevailed. The Czar Alexander
accepted the new order of things in Germany as soon as
he ascertained what schemes were cherished by the
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? RUSSIAN AND PRUSSIAN ALLIANCE 287
Court of the Tuileries against the left bank of the Rhine.
In the next year (1870) this attitude of our friend and
neighbour underwent its severest test. Austria, Italy,
and Denmark, as is well known, were on the point of
concluding an alliance against Germany when the victories
of Worth and Spicheren intervened. England did not
dare to forbid the French to make the attack, which a
single word from the Queen of the Seas could have pre-
vented, and afterwards she prolonged the war by her
sale of arms and by the one-sided manner in which she
maintained her neutrality. The Czar Alexander, on the
other hand, greeted each victory of his royal uncle with
sincere joy. That was the important point, and not
the ill-humour of Prince Gortschakoff which our author
depicts with so much satisfaction. Russia was the only
Great Power whose head displayed friendly sentiments
towards us during that difficult time. And if we wish to
realise how valuable Russian friendship was for us
also in the following years, we must compare the present
state of things with the past. As long as the alliance of
the three Emperors lasted a European war was quite
out of the question, for the notorious war crisis of 1875
has in reality never existed. Since Russia has separated
from the other two Imperial Powers we are at any rate
within sight of the possibility of a European war, and may
perhaps be suddenly compelled to act on two frontiers
simultaneously.
The most welcome task for an author who openly
preaches war against Russia was obviously to show in
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? 288 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
detail through what circumstances the old alliance after
the Peace of San Stefano was loosened and finally
dissolved. I know no more of these matters than anyone
else. I only know that in Russia there is deep vexation
at the course taken by the Berlin Congress, and that a
great deal of the blame is imputed to the German Empire.
I have heard of secret negotiations regarding a Franco-
Russian Alliance, and am without further argument
convinced that Prince Bismarck would not have given
German policy its latest direction without very solid
reasons. But I have no more exact knowledge of the
matter. Therefore it was with easily intelligible curiosity
that I began to read the last section of the book. I
hoped to learn something about the transactions between
Russia and France; I hoped to learn whether the senti-
ments of the Czar Alexander have changed, or whether
the monarch does not now more personally direct
the foreign policy of his kingdom, etc. But our author
himself knows nothing about such matters; he deceives
himself or others when he pretends to be initiated. He
only produces lengthy extracts from the Germanophobe
articles of the Russian Press. Every publicist who is
at all an expert knows just as many fine and pithy
passages in Muscovite papers. In Hansen's "Coulisses
de la diplomatic " the author, who loves historical sources
of this kind, might discover similar outpourings of
Russian politicians. But all that proves very little.
The question is much rather whether the Russian Press,
which, as is well known, only enjoys a certain degree of
\
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? RUSSIAN AND PRUSSIAN ALLIANCE 289
freedom in the two capitals and remains quite unknown
to the mass of the people, is powerful enough to influence
the course of Russia's foreign policy. To this question
the author gives no answer.
So we lay the book aside without any information on
the present state of affairs, but not without a feeling of
shame. When two who have been friends for many
years have broken with each other, it is not only unchival-
rous for one to tax his old companions with sins com-
mitted long ago, but unwise; the reproach always
falls back on the reproacher. The last impression which
the reader carries away from this work is much more
unfavourable for Prussia than for Russia; therefore even
the foreign Press greeted it at once with well-deserved
contempt. Anyone who believes the author must
come to the conclusion that King Frederick William III
and his two successors had conducted a Russian and not
a Prussian policy. Happily this view is quite false.
But we would remind the Baltic publicist, who, under the
disguise of a Prussian patriot, draws such a nattering
picture of our history, of an old Prussian story which still
has its application. In the Rhine campaign of 1793 a
Prussian grenadier was inveighing vigorously against
King Frederick William II; but when an Austrian fellow-
soldier chimed in the Prussian gave him a box on the ear
and said, "/ may talk like that, but not you; for I am a
Prussian. "
The author's remarks on the future are based upon the
tacit assumption that the European Powers fall naturally
T
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? 2go TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
into two groups--Austria, England, and Germany on the
one side, Italy, Russia, and France on the other. In the
short time since the book came out this assumption has
already been made void; the English elections have
reminded the world very forcibly of the instability of
grouping in the system of States. If the author had
commenced his work only four weeks later it would
probably not have appeared in the book market at all or
have done so in a very different shape.
But there is one truth, though certainly no new one,
in the train of thought which is apparent in this book;
it is only too correct that hostility to everything German
is constantly on the increase in influential Russian society.
But we do not at all believe that an intelligent Russian
Government, not misled by the dreams of Pan-slavism,
must necessarily cherish such a feeling towards us. We
regard a war against Russia as a great calamity, for who,
now, when the period of colonising absolutism lies far
behind us, can seriously wish to encumber our State with
the possession of Warsaw, and with millions of Poles and
Jews? But many signs indicate that the next great
European crisis will find the Russians in the ranks of
our enemies. All the more important therefore is our
newly-confirmed friendship with Austria.
This alliance is, as a matter of course, sure of the
involuntary sympathy of our people; if it endures it
may have the useful effect of strengthening the German
element in Austria, and finally checking the melancholy
decay of our civilisation in Bohemia and Hungary, in
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? RUSSIAN AND PRUSSIAN ALLIANCE 291
Krain and the Tyrol. Our interests in the East coincide,
for the present, with those of the Danube Empire. After
the occupation of Bosnia has once taken place Austria
cannot again surrender the position she has taken up,
without preparing a triumph for our common enemy,
Pan-slavism. Nevertheless, we cannot join our Baltic J
author in prophesying that the treaty of friendship with
Austria will be as lasting and immovable as the unity
of the German Empire. Germany has plenty of enemies
in the medley of peoples which exist in Austria: all
the Slavs, even the ultramontane Germans, hate us;
nay, more, the Magyars, our political friends, suppress
German civilisation in the Saxon districts of Transylvania
much more severely than the Russians ever ventured to
do in their Baltic provinces. It is not in our power to keep
these hostile forces for ever aloof from the guidance
of Russia. The unity of our Empire, on the other hand,
rests on our own power alone, and on the loyalty which
we owe to ourselves; therefore it will last, whatever
changes may take place among the European alliances.
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? FREEDOM.
When shall we see the last of those timid spirits who
find it needful to increase the burden of life by self-
created torture, to whom every advance of the human
mind is but one sign more of the decay of our race--of the
approach of the Day of Judgment? The great majority
of our contemporaries are again beginning, thank
Heaven! to believe quite sturdily and heartily in
themselves; yet we are weak enough to repeat some, at
least, of the gloomy predictions of those atrabilious
spirits. It has become a commonplace assumption
that all-conquering culture will at last supplant national
morality by a morality of mankind, and transform the
world into a cosmopolitan, primitive pap.
But the same
law holds good of nations as of individuals, who show less
differentiation in childhood than in mature years. In
other words, if a people has vitality enough to keep itself
and its nationality going in the merciless race-struggle
of history, every advance in civilisation will certainly
bring its external life in closer contact with other peoples,
but it will bring into clearer relief its more refined, its
deeper idiosyncrasies. We all follow the Paris fashions,
we are linked with neighbouring nations, by a thousand
292
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? FREEDOM 293
different interests; yet our feelings and ideas, so far as
the French and British intellectual world is concerned,
are undoubtedly more independent than they were
seven hundred years ago, when the peasant all over
Europe spent his life fettered by patriarchal custom,
whilst the ecclesiastic in every country derived his
knowledge from the same sources, and the nobility of
Latin Christendom created for itself a common code of
honour and morality under the walls of Jerusalem.
That lively exchange of ideas between nations, on which
the present generation rightly plumes itself, has never
been a mere give-and-take.
We are fortified in this consoling knowledge when we
see how the ideas of a German classic about the highest
object of human thought--about freedom--have recently
been developed in a very individual way by two dis-
tinguished political thinkers of France and England.
When Wilhelm von Humboldt's essay on the limits of
the operations of the State appeared for the first time
in complete form a few years ago, some sensation was
caused by that brilliant work in Germany too. We were
rejoiced to get a deeper insight into the evolution of one
of our chief men. The more refined minds delightedly
detected the inspiring breath of the Golden Age of German
humanity, for it is indeed only in Schiller's nearly-related
letters on the aesthetic education of the human race that
the bright ideal of a beautiful humanity, which fascinated
Germans during that period, has been depicted with
equal eloquence and distinction. The gifted youth who
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? 294 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
had just had his first look into the self-complacent red-
tapeism of Frederick William IPs bureaucracy, and had
turned away, chilled by its lifeless formalities, in order
to live a life of aesthetic leisure at home--he was certainly
to be forgiven for thinking very poorly of the State.
Dalberg had asked him to write the little book--a prince
who had the intention of lavishing profusely on his country
all the good things of life by means of an administration
that would know everything and look after everything.
The young thinker emphasized all the more keenly the
fact that the State is nothing but an institution for pur-
poses of security; that it must never again interfere
directly or indirectly with a nation's morals or character;
that a man was freest when the State was least active.
We, of the present generation, know only too well that
the true cause of the ruin of the old German State was
that all free minds set themselves in such morbid opposi-
tion to the State that they fled from it like young
Humboldt, instead of serving it like Humboldt when
grown to a man, and elevating it by the nobility of their
free human development. The doctrine which sees in
the State merely a hindrance, a necessary evil, seems
obsolete to the German of to-day. Curiously enough,
though, this youthful work of Humboldt's is now being
glorified by John Stuart Mill in his book on liberty,
and by Edward Laboulaye in his essay " L'? tat et ses
limites," as a mine of political wisdom for the troubles
of the present time.
Mill is a faithful son of those genuinely German middle
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? FREEDOM 295
classes of England, which, since the days of Richard II
have preferentially represented our country's inner essence,
its spiritual work, both in good and bad respects, both by
an earnest desire for truth and by a gloomy, fanatical zeal
in religious belief. He has become a rich man since he
discovered and recognised the most precious jewel of
our people, German idealism. Speaking from that free
watch-tower he utters words of reproach, bitter words,
against his fellow-countrymen's confused thinking; and
unfortunately, also, against the present generation, bitter
words such as only the honoured national economist
would dare to speak unpunished. But, like a true-born
Englishman, as a pupil of Bentham, he tests Kant's ideas
by the standard of the useful, the " well-comprehended,
permanent" utility of course, and therein shows in his
own person the deep abyss which will always separate
the two nations' intellectual activities. He wavers
between the English and German views of the world--
in his book on liberty, just as in his latest work,
"Utilitarianism "--and finally gets out of the difficulty
by attributing an ideal meaning to Bentham's purely
materialistic thoughts, which brings them close to the
German view. With the help of the apostle of German
humanity he contrives to praise the North American
State-methods, which owe little, or nothing, to the beauti-
ful humanity of German-Hellenic classicism. Laboulaye,
on the other hand, belongs to that small school of keen-
sighted Liberals, which feels the weakness of their country
to reside in French centralisation, and endeavours to
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? 296 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
re-awaken the germs of German civilisation which are
there slumbering under the Celtic-Roman regime. The
talented author deals with historical facts, rather boldly
than thoroughly; briefly, he is of opinion that Christianity
was the first to recognise the worth and dignity of the
individual. Well, then, our glorious heathen Humboldt
must be a downright Christian philosopher, and with
the nineteenth century the age must be approaching
when the ideas of Christianity shall be completely realised,
and the individual, not the State, shall rule. The French-
man will only convince a small group of believers among
bis numerous readers. Mill's book, on the other hand,
has been received with the greatest applause by his fellow-
countrymen. They have called it the gospel of the nine-
teenth century. As a fact, both works stiike notes which
have a mighty echo in the heart of every modern man;
it is therefore instructive to investigate whether they
really expound the principles of genuine freedom.
Although we have learnt to assign a deeper foundation
and a richer meaning to the words of the Greek philo-
sopher, no thinker has surpassed the interpretation of
freedom which Aristotle discovered. He thinks, in his
exhaustive, empirical way, that freedom embraces
two things: the suitability of the citizens to live
as they prefer, and the sharing of the citizens in
the State-government (ruling, and at the same time
being ruled). That one-sidedness, which is the lever of
all human progress, brought it about that the nations
have hardly ever aspired to the full conception of freedom.
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? FREEDOM 297
It is, on the contrary, well known that the Greeks
preferred political freedom in a narrower sense, and
readily sacrificed the free activity of the individual to
a beautiful and sound existence as a community. The
love of political liberty on the part of the ancients
was certainly by no means so exclusive as is generally
believed. That definition of the Greek thinker proves
that they were by no means lacking in the comprehension
of a life lived after its own will and pleasure, of civic,
personal freedom. Aristotle knows very well that a
State-administration is even thinkable which does not
include the national life, taken in sum; he expressly
declares that States are particularly distinguished from
each other, by the question whether everything, or nothing,
or how much is shared by the citizens. At any rate, the
idea was dominant in the mature State of antiquity
that the citizen is only a part of the State, that true virtue
is realised only in the State. Political thinkers among
the ancients, therefore, occupy themselves solely with the
questions: Who shall rule in the State? and, How shall
the State be protected? Only occasionally, as a slight
misgiving, is the deeper question stirred: How shall
the citizen be protected from the State? The ancients
were assured that a power which a people exercises over
itself needs no limitation. How different are the German
conceptions of freedom, which lay chief emphasis on the
unlimited right of personality! In the Middle Age the
State began everywhere, with an implacable combat of
the State-power against the desire for independence on
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? 298 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
the part of individuals, guilds, classes, which was
hostile to the State; and we Germans experienced in our
own persons with what loss of power and genuine
freedom the libcrtat of the minor princes, the
"freedoms of the honourable classes" were bought.
If, at length, in the course of this struggle, which in later
times was gloriously settled by an absolute Monarchy,
the majesty, the unity of the State was preserved, a
transformation would take place in the people's ideas of
freedom, and a fresh quarrel would start. No longer
is the attempt made to separate the individual from a
State-power whose necessity has been understood. But
there is a demand that the State-power should not be
independent of the people; it should become an actual
popular administration, working within established
forms, and bound by the will of the majority of the
citizens.
Everybody knows how immeasurably far from that
goal our Fatherland still is. What Vittorio Alfieri
proposed to himself as his object in life nearly a hundred
years ago:
"Di far con penna ai falsi imperj offesa,"
is still a difficult, toilsome task for the Germans. On
the Fulda, on the Leine, and probably also on the
Spree, a pusillanimous German might even to-day repeat
Alfieri's question: Ought a man who is steeped in the
feeling of civism to take the responsibility of bringing
children into the world under the yoke of a tyranny?
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? FREEDOM 299
Ought he to generate beings who, the more sensitive
their conscience the stronger their sense of justice, are
bound to suffer the more severely beneath that perversion
of all ideas of honour, justice, and shame, whereby a
tyranny poisons a people? What, however, Alfieri
himself experienced did not happen in the case of the
peoples. When, having reached grown-up age, he
published the savage pamphlet "On Tyranny," which
he had once written in holy zeal as a youth, he was
obliged himself to confess: To-day I should be wanting
in the courage, or, more correctly speaking, the fury,
which was requisite for the authorship of such a book.
The nations to-day regard with similar feelings the
abstract hatred of tyrants of the past century. We no
longer ask: "Come si debbe morire nella tirannide,"
but we stand with determined, invincible confidence
in the midst of the fight for political freedom, the result
of which has for a long time not been in question. For
the common lot of everything human has dominated
this struggle too, and this time, also, the thoughts of the
nations largely anticipated actual conditions. How poor
in vitality, in fruitfulness, are the partisans of absolutism
when confronted with the people's demand for freedom!
When two mighty streams of thought dash roaring at
one another, a new middle-stream quietly separates at
last from the wild confusion. Nay, rather, a stream rages
against a strong breakwater and makes itself a way
through thousands and thousands of fissures. Every-
thing new that this nineteenth century has provided is
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? 300 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
the work of Liberalism. The foes of freedom are only
able to utter a cool negative, or to revive the ideas of long-
forgotten days so that they may seem alive again, or
finally they borrow the weapons of their opponents.
In the tribunals of our Chambers, by means of the
free Press, which they owe the Liberals, by means of
catchwords which they overhear from their adversaries,
they are championing principles which, if put in opera-
tion, would be bound to annihilate all the freedom of
the Press, all Parliamentary life.
Everywhere, even in classes which fifty years ago
were still closed to all political ideas, there is a calm and
firm belief in the truth of those great words, which,
with their deliberate definiteness, mark the boundary
of a new period; belief in the words of the American
Declaration of Independence: "The just powers of
governments are derived from the consent of the
governed. " So indisputable is this idea to modern
men that even Gentz had reluctantly to agree with
the detested protagonists of freedom when he said that
the State-power could only claim sacrifices from the
citizen so long as the latter could call the State his
State. And these problems of freedom are so old, so
thoroughly examined in all their aspects, so near a
decisive issue, that as regards most of them a concilia-
tion and purgation of opinions has already been achieved.
It was at last understood that the fight for political
freedom is not a dispute between Republic and Monarchy,
because the people's " ruling and at the same time being
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? FREEDOM 301
ruled " is equally realisable in both forms of the State.
Only one single corollary of political freedom is even
to-day the cause of embittered, passionate discussion.
If, namely, the people's moral consciousness is in very
truth the final, just foundation of the State, if in very
truth the people rules according to its own will, and for
its own happiness, a longing for the national isolation
of the State arises of its own accord. Because it is
only where the vital, unquestioning consciousness of
belonging together permeates all members of the State
that the State is what it ought to be, according to its
nature, an organised people in unity. Thence the desire
to exclude foreign elements, and, in divided nations,
the impulse to get rid of the smaller of the two " father-
lands. " It is not our intention to describe to how many
necessary limitations this political liberty is subject.
Suffice it that there is everywhere a demand for the
government of the peoples in harmony with their will;
it is more general and uniform than ever before in history,
and will at last be as surely satisfied as the peoples'
existence is more permanent, more justified, and stronger
than the life of their powerful opponents.
However, let us look things in the face, let us con-
sider how entirely our ideas of freedom have changed
in this Protean fight in which we ourselves are spec-
tators and actors. We no longer meet the problems of
freedom with the overbearingness, with the vague
enthusiasm of youth. Political freedom is freedom
politically limited--this phrase, which was blamed as
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? 302 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
servile even a few decades ago, is to-day admitted by
everybody capable of political judgment. And how
ruthlessly has harsh experience destroyed all those mad
ideas which hid themselves behind the great name of
Liberty! The ideas of freedom which prevailed during
the French Revolution were a vague blend of Mon-
tesquieu's ideas and Rousseau's half-antique conception.
The construction of political liberty was believed to be
complete if only the legislative power were separated
from the executive and the judicial, and every citizen
were, on equal terms, to help in electing the deputies
of the National Convention. Those demands were
fulfilled, most abundantly fulfilled, and what was the
end of it all? The most disgusting despotism Europe
ever saw. The idolatry which our Radicals displayed
all too long for the horrors of the Convention is at last
beginning to die out in the presence of the trifling reflec-
tion: If an all-mighty State-power forbids me to open
my mouth, compels me to belie my faith, and guillotines
me as soon as I defy such insolence, it is a matter of
perfect indifference whether that tyranny is exercised
by a hereditary prince or by a Convention; both the one
and the other is slavery. But the fallacy in Rousseau's
maxim that, where all are equal, each one obeys himself,
seems really too obvious. It is much truer that he
obeys the majority, and what is to prevent that majority
from behaving quite as tyrannously as an unscrupulous
monarch?
If we consider the feverish convulsions which have
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? FREEDOM 303
shaken for seventy years the nation on the other side
of the Rhine (which is, despite all, a great nation), we
are ashamed to find that the French, in spite of all their
enthusiasm for liberty, have only known equality, and
never freedom. But equality is a shallow idea, which
may as well signify an equal slavery of all as an equal
freedom of all. And it certainly means the former
when it is aspired to by a people as the sole, highest
political good. The highest conceivable degree of
equality--communism--is the highest conceivable degree
of serfdom, because it assumes the suppression of all
natural inclinations. Assuredly, it is not an accident
that the passionate impulse for equality is especially
rife in that people, whose Celtic blood is ever and ever
again finding pleasure in flocking, in blind subjection,
round a great Cassarean figure, whether his name be
Vercingetorix, Louis XIV, or Napoleon. We Germans
insist too proudly on the limitless right of the individual
for us to be able to discover freedom in universal suffrage;
we reflect that even in several Ecclesiastical Orders
the heads are chosen by universal suffrage; but who
in the wide world has ever sought for freedom in a con-
vent? Truly it is not the spirit of liberty which speaks
in Lamartine's declaration, in the year 1848: "Every
Frenchman is an elector, therefore a self-ruler; no
Frenchman can say to another, 'You are more a ruler
than I. '" What instinct of mankind is gratified by
such words? None other than the meanest of all--
envy I Even Rousseau's enthusiasm for the civism of
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? 304 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
the ancients will not stand serious examination. The
civic glory of Athens rested on the broad substratum
of slavery, of contempt for all economic activities; whilst
we moderns base our fame on respect for all men, on
our acknowledgment of the nobility of labour. The
most bigoted aristocrat in the modern world seems like
a democrat by comparison with that Aristotle who
coolly lays it down with horrible hardness of heart:
"It is not possible for a man who lives the life of a
manual labourer to practise works of virtue. "
Deeper natures were impelled, long ago, by such con-
siderations to examine more carefully on what prin-
ciples the much-envied freedom of the Britons rests.
They found that in that country no all-powerful govern-
ment determines the destinies of the most remote
communities, but every county, however small, is
administered by itself. This acknowledgment of the
blessings of self-government was an extraordinary
advance; for the enervating influence on the citizens
of a State that looks after everything can hardly be
depicted in sufficiently dark colours; it is, therefore, so
uncanny, because a morbid state of the people is only
revealed in its full extent in a later generation. So long
as the eye of the great Frederick watched over his Prus-
sians, a simple glance at the hero raised even small
souls above their standard; his vigilance was a spur to
the sluggards. But when he passed away he left a
generation without a will, accustomed--as Napoleon III
boasts of bis Frenchmen--to expect from the State all
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? FREEDOM 305
incitement to action, disposed to that vanity which
is the opposite of real national pride, capable on occasion
of breaking out in fleeting enthusiasm for the idea of
State-unity, but incapable of commanding itself--
incapable of the greatest task which is laid upon modern
nations.
