VI.
Side by side with Treitschke and his pupils (of whom the most conspicuous, at the moment, is Bernhardi) discerning critics are apt to place, as furnishing inspiration for the war, the German philosophers of the nineteenth century, even the poets and musicians, whose posthumous influence is still strongly felt in Germany. They attempt to prove that these representatives of the Teutonic genius are the prime agents, whether consciously or no, in the calamities from which Europe in general, and the Latin race in particular, are suffering to-day. The idolatrous worship paid to these artists by their countrymen is reckoned among the chief causes of that insensate pride and ambition which have entered so deeply into the national soul.
The German people, believing that it possesses in Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche the greatest thinkers, in Goethe and Schiller the greatest poets, in Beethoven, Schubert, Bach, and Wagner the greatest musicians, and convinced that it holds the foremost place in every branch of science and learning, looks upon itself as a superior race, destined to a material sway over the entire world, just as it reigns supreme at present, through the glory of its men of genius, in the intellectual sphere. “Nation of thinkers, poets, and heroes,” such is the refrain dinned into its ears by its writers and acolytes—“nation whose supremacy none can question, thou shalt fill the world with the inexhaustible treasures of thy culture!” In plain language, this means that material power must go hand in hand with spiritual rule; the strength and intelligence of Germany shall dominate all other nations, and stamp them with the ineffaceable imprint of German Kultur.
Other inquirers have deciphered the apocalyptic book of Nietzsche, and have found, to their amazement, Sibylline oracles that apply with wonderful force to the campaign carried on by the Kaiser’s troops and the feelings that these troops seem to harbour in their pitiless souls. The opening of the era of great wars, the appearance of the superb blond beast of prey, the glorifying of evil, the contempt for pity, all that we are now witnessing with horror, is already implied in the prophecies of Zarathustra. From this they infer, not only that Nietzsche was a great seer, but that the cruel philosophy of this visionary, for whom madness lay in wait, has intoxicated Germany and inspired her actions.
All these critics, I venture to say, have been too liable to make the facts fit in with a cast-iron system. It cannot be disputed, indeed, that the teachings of historians and philosophers, poets and musicians, have helped to inflame German pride, to create a blind faith in the civilizing mission of the German race, to induce that unbalanced, dangerous state of soul which already existed before the war, and has since then revealed itself to the world at large. It is probable, also, that this state of soul will have no little weight in determining the duration of the war. If it retains its ascendancy, it will keep the intellectuals arrayed in a solid phalanx round the Emperor, until all the best blood of the nation has ebbed away, until the final victory or defeat. Nevertheless, we must beware of building up a theory, of extending to a whole community the wild dreams of a certain class, and of exaggerating their influence upon the events of yesterday and to-day.
Although some two-thirds of the Empire’s inhabitants live in urban centres, the number of those who have been educated at universities and higher schools is only a small minority in a total of sixtyseven millions. I admit that this small minority directs the mass, in the same way as the brain directs the whole human machine; I recognize, too, that when the fatal hour struck, it had no difficulty in winning over those Socialist leaders who, tainted though they are with imperialist ideas, would never of themselves have declared war on their brethren, the working-men in other countries. Moreover, one must assume that the warlike passions, stimulated by a peculiar teaching of history and by scientific vanity, met with approval and encouragement from high quarters, from the political authority embodied in one individual. If the Imperial Government and its supreme head had sincerely wanted peace, the aggressive movement that went forth from the schools and universities might have been checked in time, or turned off into peaceful paths by the same disciplinary methods that obtain in the Prussian army. William II. was not the man to let himself be forced into a foreign war by civilian Pan-Germans, after the manner in which Alexander had yielded to Pan-Slavic pressure in 1877. By resisting, it may be argued, William II. would have lost all popularity. This would be true if the voice of the mob—the only voice that could make any impression on so self-willed a monarch—had at any time been raised for war; but the masses were peacefully inclined, or else indifferent. The Emperor has always been the autocrat, with a full sense of his rights, as may be seen from the proud motto that he wrote in the “golden book” of the Munich town-hall: “Suprema lex regis voluntas esto!” (“May the King’s will be the supreme law!”) He expects his wishes to be taken as commands. At a word from him, the dreams of world-dominion, born in the brains of scholars and men of science, would have been scattered to the four winds, or buried in a vast heap of unreadable books and articles.
In my opinion, therefore, it is far more accurate to say, generally speaking, that the writers, the artists, and the savants who signed the famous manifesto of the “Ninety-three”—we honour them too much by still speaking of it to-day—all those who exploited the historical and intellectual glories and the great scientific renown of Germany for purposes of political ambition, were only the auxiliaries and catspaws of the Imperial policy.