VII.—Prussia as a Military State.
That colony of many heterogeneous populations is above all a military State, a Kriegstaat. It was created through war and has been organized for war. In the eighteenth century the whole of Prussia was one vast camp and barracks. The King of Prussia is primarily the Kriegsherr, or war-lord. The ruling caste of Junkers is a caste of warriors. The very schoolmasters in the eighteenth century were nearly all recruited from the invalided non-commissioned officers. Historians single out Fat William, the Sergeant-King, as the supreme type of the martinet King. But it is not only Fat William, but all the Kings of Prussia who have been martinet Kings and recruiting sergeants. Prussia has made war into an exact science. Prussia has created the “nation in arms.”
Geographical conditions and the ambitions of the Hohenzollern have combined to make war a permanent necessity. Prussia was a “mark” or frontier land, and the margraves or mark-grafs were the earls and protectors of the Mark. The frontiers of Prussia were open on every side. She was surrounded by enemies. George William, the father of the Great Elector, during the Thirty Years’ War tried to maintain neutrality. He soon found out that neutrality did not pay, and his territory was overrun by hostile bands. Pomerania was occupied and retained by the Swedes. Poles, Russians, and Austrians in turn invaded the country. After the Battle of Kunersdorff, in 1761, Prussia was at her last gasp, and Frederick the Great found himself in so desperate a position that he had resolved on committing suicide. Again, after Jena, Berlin was occupied by the French, and for five years remained under the yoke. Insecurity has been for generations the law of Prussian existence. The Prussian State has known many ups and downs and has passed through many tragic vicissitudes. They managed to turn geographical and military necessities to the advantage of their dynastic ambitions. What was at first commanded by the instinct of self-preservation became afterwards a habit, a tradition, and a systematic policy. They discovered that the best way to maintain an efficient defensive was to transform it into a vigorous offensive. They discovered that the best means of living safely was to live dangerously. They discovered, in the words of Treitschke, that “the one mortal sin for a State was to be weak.”
VIII.—Prussia as a Predatory State.
Not only is Prussia a military State, it is also a predatory State. All the great Powers of Europe have been in a sense military States. But to them all war has only been a means to an end, and often a means to higher and unselfish ends. The Spaniards were a military nation, but their wars were crusades against the Moor. The Russians have been a military nation, but their wars were crusades against the Turk or wars for the liberation of the Serbians, the Bulgarians, and the Greeks. The French have been a military nation, but they fought for a chivalrous ideal, for adventure, for humanity. Even Napoleon’s wars of conquest were really wars for the establishment of democracy. The Corsican was the champion and the testamentary executor of the French Revolution.
The peculiarity of the Prussian State is that it has been from the beginning a predatory State. The Hohenzollerns have ever waged war mainly for spoliation and booty. Not once have they waged war for an ideal or for a principle.
The German Kaiser delights to appear in the garb of the medieval knight. He wears three hundred appropriate uniforms. A German wit has said that he wears the uniform of an English Admiral when he visits an aquarium, and that he dons the uniform of an English Field-Marshal when he eats an English plum-pudding. Amongst those three hundred disguises there is none which is more popular in Germany than that of the Modern Lohengrin bestriding the world in glittering armour. The Kaiser lacks the democratic gift of humour, and does not seem to be aware of the incongruity of the Lohengrin masquerade. A Prussian King cannot honestly play the part of a knight in quest of the Holy Grail. Chivalry and Prussianism, the crusading spirit and the predatory spirit, are contradictory terms.
The most exalted Order of the Prussian dynast is the Order of the Black Eagle. The Hohenzollerns could not have chosen a more fitting emblem than that of the sinister bird of prey. For they have been pre-eminently the men of prey amongst modern dynasts. Every province of their dominions has been stolen from their neighbours. They secularized and stole the Church property of the Teutonic Order. They stole Silesia from Austria. They acquired Posen by murdering a noble nation. They stole Hanover from its lawful rulers. They stole Schleswig-Holstein from the Danes. They wrested Alsace-Lorraine from the French.
Circumstances in modern times seem to have singularly favoured their designs of conquest. To outward appearance they were threatened by powerful enemies, but those enemies looked far more formidable than they appeared. On the Far Western boundary, the feeble ecclesiastical Princes of Cologne, Treves, and Mayence ruled over the smiling fields and vineyards of the Rhine provinces. On every side Germany was broken up into petty principalities. The Holy Roman Empire of Germany, which was neither Holy nor Roman nor German, and which had ceased to be an empire, was only the shadow of a great name. Austria was perpetually distracted by internal and external dangers. Poland was an unruly republic. The very weakness of their neighbours was a temptation to the Hohenzollern.
The one redoubtable enemy to the Hohenzollern dynasty was Russia. But after the disastrous defeat of the Seven Years’ War inflicted by Russian arms, Prussia learned to control by deceit and policy a Power which she dared not challenge, and could not hope to overcome, on the battlefield. From the middle of the eighteenth century Prussia concluded a dynastic alliance with the Russian dynasty. The Hohenzollerns liberally provided their Russian brethren with German Princes and Princesses. The Prince of Holstein, who became Tsar Peter III., was the first German Prince of the Romanov dynasty. The little Cinderella Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, the future Catherine the Great, was the first of an uninterrupted line of German Princesses. The Teutonic barons of the Baltic provinces for one hundred and fifty years were able to control the Russian foreign policy. Nesselrode for forty years was the Foreign Minister of the Tsar, although he only spoke German and did not know a word of Russian. Nicholas I. and Alexander II., with unswerving loyalty, supported the interests of their Prussian brother-in-law and nephew.
On two occasions the Russian Tsars actually saved the Hohenzollern from complete destruction. In 1761, when Russian armies occupied Berlin, an apologetic Tsar begged to be forgiven for daring to vanquish his illustrious cousin. In 1807, at Tilsit, Prussia was only saved from dismemberment through the quixotic intervention of Tsar Alexander I. And the Russian Tsar proved so powerless against Prussian intrigues that, although Alexander I. had concluded a close alliance with Napoleon, the German-Russian Court at St. Petersburg boycotted Napoleon’s Ambassador, Savary, and eventually succeeded in breaking the Franco-Russian coalition.
But the Hohenzollerns did not only wage a predatory war for conquest and spoliation. Their methods have been as predatory as their aims. War to them was not merely a policy. It was a business, and often a lucrative business. In the Middle Ages war had been largely a trade. A huge commerce in prisoners was transacted, and an enterprising Italian Condottiere would often recoup himself through the ransom of one single rich prisoner. The Prussians have continued those medieval methods until this day. Treitschke lays it down in his “Politik” that war must be made to pay, and need not exhaust a Prussian Treasury.
The poor Belgians to-day are learning to their cost the full meaning of those Prussian predatory methods. The Prussian invaders are extorting millions of money, as well as enormous food-supplies, from a starving people. They are dislocating whatever remains of the internal trade. They are breaking up thousands of miles of Belgian railways, and they are sending them to the Polish theatre of war. But, brutally as the poor Belgians have been treated, one shudders to think of the cruelty and the greed of the Prussian in the new conquered Russian territories, and of the pitiful plight of the Poles and the Lithuanians.