V.
We are told that Frederick the Great was an incomparable political virtuoso. We are told that he showed heroic fortitude in disaster, after Kollin and Kunersdorff. But so did Cæsar Borgia after the sudden death of Alexander VI. We are told that he was tolerant of all creeds. But that was only because he disbelieved all creeds, and he believed, with Gibbon, that “all creeds are equally useful to the statesman.” We are reminded that he was an amazing economist, husbanding and developing the national finances. But his finances were only the sinews of war. We are told that he protected literature and art, but, like religion, he found literature an instrument useful for his political designs. We are reminded that he was himself the servant of the State. But in serving the State he only served his own interests, because the State was incarnated in himself, and in husbanding his resources he was only acting like a miser who is adding to his hoard. We are finally told that as the result of his life-work Frederick succeeded in creating the most marvellous military machine of modern times. We forget that, as is the way with most military machines, the Prussian machine ten years after Frederick’s death had become a pitiful wreck in the hands of his immediate successor, and that it required the genius of Bismarck to manufacture another Prussian military machine to be used once more for the enslavement of Europe.