They are compelled to explain, however, the long decline that, like an arctic night, followed this brilliant epoch. Nothing could be easier. They show us the Germans absorbed from the Middle Ages in the pursuit of a spiritual and religious ideal, solely engaged in rescuing freedom of thought and freedom to interpret the Scriptures from the tyranny of the Church. The noble aim pursued by the Lutheran Reformation could not be realized without internal struggles that drained Germany of her sap for many a long year, while the Imperial sceptre came near to falling from the enfeebled grasp of the Hapsburgs. The fact that the first nation of Europe was devoting all its efforts to solving the religious problem and to establishing its spiritual control on the ruins of Roman superstition, enabled other nations—Spain, France, and England—to fight during that period for the temporal mastery of the world. The Prussian school would have us believe that in this way the Germans were cheated of their destiny. They could not at the same time follow the noblest of all ideals and fulfil their duty as a civilizing force. Without the Reformation, which nevertheless gives them an inestimable claim to the gratitude of the human race, their dominion would now extend from the Straits of Dover to the Bosphorus and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. It would also include vast colonies, for the German mariners would not have let themselves be forestalled by others in the exploration and conquest of the New World.
At last, however, the God-given mission of carrying on the work of Charlemagne and the first elective Cæsars has been entrusted to a new line of rulers marked out by fate. Successive princes of the great Hohenzollern house have patiently built up again the edifice that time had destroyed. In reuniting the scattered limbs of the Germanic body, in making it once more alive and whole, they have restored all its ancient vigour. Once more it is master of its destiny, free to pursue its irresistible onward march.
It would not be difficult to pick holes in these scientific arguments, which are used, among other things, as a warrant for regaining territories that once were fiefs of the Imperial Crown, but have been severed from Germany for hundreds of years. The Hohenstaufen Empire included races that it was impossible to amalgamate or unify. A colossus with feet of clay, it soon lost its solidity and was shattered into fragments. The power of the emperors dwindled away in Germany itself, choked by the parasitic growth of feudal princedoms and free cities, while around it in Europe strong and cohesive nations were being formed. With malice aforethought, the Prussian theory ignores the fact that countries once attached to the Holy Roman Empire managed to secure and lead a separate existence long before the Reformation, and, like the Netherlands for instance, have since then preserved their own language and customs, which were not the language or the customs of Germany. Others, like the two Burgundies or the Kingdom of Arles, retain no trace of their short-lived reincorporation in the Germanic scrap-heap.
After all, the most striking feature in this wilful distortion of events and processes is not its fantastic character, but the goal that its authors sought to attain. That goal was not so much to produce work of scientific value, as, by throwing an artificial light upon the past, the light of an exaggerated patriotism, to equip their countrymen for the coming struggles. The plan that they followed was to arouse the nationalist sentiment—never far below the surface—of the academic youth, by foretelling the resurrection of a great age that had vanished, by making the conquests of recent years seem paltry in comparison with those yet to be won—in short, by showing that the triumphal march of the past century was not yet ended, and that it must lead to yet more fruitful victories. The Prussian school could only succeed in their task by inspiring their pupils with a hatred of those rival nations which it was essential to crush, before the Germany of their dreams could come into her own.
V.
The most notable representative of this school was Heinrich von Treitschke, compiler-in-chief of the Hohenzollern saints’ calendar. Since the beginning of the war, much attention has been paid to him in England and in France; people have even begun to read him. From his books on history and politics we try to gain an insight into those glowing ideas which have played their part in bringing on the present conflict. In reading them we are struck with their literary merit; we are amazed at their wealth of document, their profound study of the original sources; we cannot help admiring the infinite care with which this true artist paints a historical portrait in all its details. His influence on German thought, however, and on all classes of German society, is mainly due to his overpowering eloquence, which may probably be set down to his Slavonic blood. During the last twenty years of his life he made a great name for himself as professor at Berlin University, and saw one of his dearest wishes fulfilled—that of becoming the real educator of the younger generation.
Entering upon his professorship and his political work during the Schleswig-Holstein crisis, at the time when Germany was in the throes of her national unification, he was from the first an ardent admirer of the Hohenzollerns and of Bismarck. He scornfully compared the wisdom and resolution of William I. and his minister with the hopeless mediocrity of the minor German sovereigns, who, he maintained, showed an alarming family likeness in this respect. The greatness of Prussia, the glory of a nation that was also an army, the Heaven-sent mission of that peerless dynasty, the Hohenzollerns—these were the articles of the faith preached to his countrymen by this apostle of the Bismarckian policy. The history of Germany, as traced by his pen, culminated in her union under Prussian sway. After extolling this achievement of the Hohenzollern sword, the prophetic writer passes on to the vision of a Germany that will become the first Power in the world, once her flag has crossed all the seas in triumph. What limit shall be set to her dominion? Treitschke, in offering these dazzling vistas to the imagination of his hearers and readers, was probably the true father of that world-policy for which William II. and Prince von Bülow are generally held responsible.
One finds in his works all the stock commonplaces, beloved of German military writers, regarding the necessity and moral value of war. He glorifies war as the foster-mother of heroic ideas, and for him the issue of battles is the judgment of God. But among all the historians who have bowed down before the Prussian Baal, he stands out from the ruck by virtue, not only of his superior talents, but also of his extraordinary aversion for England. The pride and envy of this Saxon who became a Prussian heart and soul could not endure that England should own a fifth of the habitable globe. It seemed to him that so vast an empire was out of all proportion to the real strength of the British nation—a nation of shop-keepers, which had won its territories, not by any remarkable genius or courage, but through fraud and hypocrisy, aided by the stupidity of other peoples. It is hardly surprising that he is accused in England of having undermined the friendly relations that formerly subsisted between the Anglo-Saxons and the Germans, and of having brought about that explosion of hatred which drove them apart three years after his death, at the beginning of the Boer War.