War and Ethics.
248. Nothing is more immoral than to consider and talk of war as an immoral thing. "War is the mother of all good things" (Empedocles).... And there is nothing more moral than the collective egoism, the self-conserving instinct, of nations.—Prof. E. Hasse, Z.D.V., p. 127.
248a. The idea of war is the child of healthy egoism, which is honest to the marrow of its bones, is ashamed of nothing in Nature.... but is the basis of all Kultur, of all morality.—K. Wagner, K.
249. We must therefore reckon with war as a necessary factor towards higher development.... A people really learns to know its full national strength only in war ... only then, indeed, does its full strength come into existence.—J. Burckhardt, W.B., p. 162.
249a. War makes room for the competent at the expense of the unsound. War is the source of all good growth. Without war the development of nations is impossible—K. Wagner, K., p. 183.
250. The sight of blood and wounds steels the nerves of the soul, the horrors of war stimulate the spirits, so that instead of the falsehood and cowardice of enervation, the old heroic virtues are restored ... fear of God, martial bravery, obedience, up-rightness of mind, constancy, truth ... manlike courage, manly pity, and all that is great and good in humanity.—E. v. Lasaulx, P.G., p. 86.
251. The brutal incidents inseparable from every war vanish completely before the idealism of the main result.... Strength, truth and honour come to the front and are brought in to play.—General v. Bernhardi, G.N.W., p. 27.
252. War is the most august and sacred of human activities.... For us, too, the great, joyful hour of battle will one day strike.... The openly expressed longing for war often degenerates into vain boasting and ludicrous sabre-rattling. But still and deep in the German heart must the joy in war and the longing for war endure.—Otto von Gottberg, in Weekly Paper for the Youth of Germany, 25th January, 1913. Nippold, D.C., p. 1.
253. Life as the most necessary medium of Kultur—that is the ground on which the modern apostles of peace take their stand.... But our German morality makes short work of all such rubbish. It says with Moltke: "Eternal peace is only a dream, and not even a beautiful dream!" No, certainly not beautiful, for a peace which could no longer look forward to war as the issue even of the worst complications would poison and rot away our inmost heart, until we became loathsome to ourselves.—F. Lange, R.D., p. 157 (1893).
254. Whosoever has crossed a great battlefield and has shuddered in the depths of his soul at all the horrors confronting him, will have found new strength and exaltation in the thought that here the whole tragic gravity of military necessity is regnant, and here a justifiable passion has done its work.—General v. Hartmann, D.R., XIV., p. 84.
255. The appeal to arms will be valid until the end of history, and therein lies the sacredness of war.—H. v. Treitschke, P., Vol. i., p. 29.
See also No. [314].