Frederick the Great
The founder of modern organised espionage
"War is a business in which the slightest scruple is detrimental to one's arms and policies. It may be said that no sovereign can seriously enter into the business of war, if he feels he has not the right to justify pillage, incendiarism and carnage," a declaration which allows us to assume that at least one Hohenzollern heart would never have bled for the fate of Louvain, or Arras, or Rheims, in 1914.
Continuing to voice his opinions on religion, the King is made to say: "Whatever we may think inwardly, impiety is never to be displayed at any time, although we must adapt our sentiments and opinions to our rank and standing in the world. It would be the height of folly, if a monarch's attention was diverted by trifles of religion which are fit only for the common people. Besides, the most complete indifference for religious matters is the best means which a King can hold to prevent his subjects from becoming fanatics. My ancestors acted in a most sensible manner in dealing with religion, undertaking a religious Reformation which, while it gave them a glorious apostolic halo, at the same time filled their treasuries with money. The Hohenzollerns began by being pagans, of course, but became Christians in the ninth century in order to please the Emperors; in the fifteenth century they became Lutherans in order to have an excuse to rob the Church, and Reformers again in the sixteenth, in order to placate the Dutch over the succession of Cleves."
In regard to Justice, Frederick declared that justice is due to the subjects of a State, although it is especially necessary that rulers should not be brought so far within the scope of justice that they become themselves subject to it. "I am too ambitious and autocratic by nature to suffer willingly the existence of another order within my States which should restrict my action. It was for this reason that I drew up a new code of laws. I am fully aware that I did away with the real spirit of justice, but the truth was, I had become rather afraid of the influence such notions exert among the common people. A King must not allow himself to be dazzled by the word Justice: it is only a relative term, and one which is susceptible of application and explanation in different ways. Everyone likes to be just in his own fashion, and as I early realised this, I decided to undermine the foundations of that great power Justice. And so it has only been by simplifying it as much as possible that I have been able to reduce it to the point where I wanted it to be—that is, to a minimum. I could never have accomplished anything had I been restrained by legal ideals. I might have passed for a just monarch, but I should never have won the title of a hero."
Of the value of a set policy in the world and as the only means of achieving any success, Frederick had very decided notions: "As it has been agreed among men that to cheat our fellow-creatures is a base and criminal act, it has been necessary to find a word which should modify the conception, and accordingly the term policy was adopted. By the word policy, I mean that we must always try to dupe other people. This is the only sure means of getting, not necessarily an advantage, but a fair chance of remaining on an equal footing. I am, therefore, not ashamed of making alliances from which only myself can derive entire advantage; but I am never so foolish as not to break faith when my interests require it, since I uphold the rectitude of the maxim that to despoil one's neighbours is to deprive them of the means of injuring one. Statesmanship can be reduced to three principles or maxims: the first is to maintain your power and, according to circumstances, to increase and extend it, just as I doubled my army on reaching the throne for the sole purposes of conquest. Make sure of your army; have plenty of money and bide a favourable time; you can then be certain, not only of preserving your States, but of adding to them. The term 'balance of power' is one which has subjugated the whole world; in reality, however, it is nothing but a mere phrase. Europe is a family in which there are too many bad brothers and relatives, and it is only by despising the whole system that vast projects can be formed. The second principle is to make your allies serve you, and to throw them off when they have ceased to be useful. The third principle is to make yourself feared—this is the height of great statesmanship. All your neighbours must be led to believe that you are a dangerous monarch who is moved by no principle except martial glory. If they are convinced that you would rather lose two kingdoms than not occupy a prominent place in history, you are certain to succeed. Above all, let no one within your kingdom write anything except to extol your actions and efforts."
Given a political philosophy of this kind as the inspiration of the Prussian idea—"Kultur," they call it—it is not hard to realise that the essentially evil qualities of the government of Prussia were certain ultimately to react upon the character of the people themselves. If anyone should doubt the correctness of our view that non-constitutional systems of government invariably require the support of vicious subsidiary systems in order to assure their stability, as in the militaristic regime of Napoleon, or the quasi-ecclesiastical rule of Richelieu, a study of Prussian autocracy will soon put him in the way of settled conviction. Since the day of Frederick, some one hundred and twenty-eight years ago, the people of Prussia have only known such liberty as is consistent with a bureaucracy the underlying conditions of which are conceived on entirely military ideas—that is to say, the type of individual freedom which we are accustomed to associate with a feudalistic regime or rule by martial law. People who travelled much on the Continent before the outbreak of the Great War may recollect how on crossing the frontier of Belgium into Germany—at Herbesthal, if we remember—one invariably seemed to experience much the same sensation as that of exchanging the atmosphere of some warm and comfortable sitting-room for the cold and formal conditions of a public office. Once across the border, the military spirit seemed to predominate everywhere, while among the friendly enough natives of the unofficial classes there was a subdued not to say cowed demeanour which was in saddening contrast with the free-and-easy cheeriness of the people just left behind. Everywhere was there evidence of set discipline and on all hands the spectre of officialism appeared to darken the daily lives of men with some sort of unexpressed threat. Even fair and open dealings seemed among the townsmen to be undertaken with the consciousness that at any moment some furtive official might come upon the scene and utter the irrevocable verboten—forbidden. Later in the noisy gaieties of the beer-garden or music-hall, one ever seemed to note that fear of the boisterous schoolboy who under the watchful eye of a forbidding master never ceases even in the fullness of his frolic to wonder just how far he is allowed to go. "Germany," says the admirable Price Collier, "has shown us that the short-cut to the government of a people by suppression and strangulation results in a dreary development of mediocrity." In our opinion the American might have added that a nation which is ruled as if it were a country of convicts, actual or potential, cannot fail inevitably to develop in a pronounced degree those symptoms of character and predisposition which land your convict in the correctional institutions where he is most commonly to be found. "Prussia and Germany," again says Collier, "are still ruled socially and politically by a small group of, roughly, fifty thousand men, eight thousand of them in the frock-coat of the civilian official and the rest in military uniforms."
It is the fashion to say that Doctor Stieber was the organiser of the modern spy system of Germany, for the conduct of which some million pounds sterling are annually appropriated. The truth is, however, that the organisation goes much farther back, a well-known statesman of the Napoleonic period, Baron Stein, having been responsible for the practical application of the theories which lie implicit in the philosophy of Frederick the Great. In his turn, Stieber assumed control of the lines and developed them to a point at which improvement became almost impossible. Stieber was a typical adventurer of the middle class, a man who, it is clear enough, had in him all those elements of character which we associate with the criminal who operates along the higher lines. It is said that he qualified as a barrister, not so much with the object of practising law, as to discover its limitations, or in other words, to know for a certainty how far scheming and the exploitation of simpler natures can be made a lawful trade. He was born in Prussia in 1818, and having been called to the Prussian Bar, sought to apply his knowledge of legal matters as a kind of counsellor in a Silesian factory, Silesia being in those days, 1847, the nursery of that vast school of Socialism which has since gained over twenty millions of adherents throughout Germany—indeed, one-third of the empire's entire population. By far the larger percentage of the workmen attached to the factory at which he was employed were Socialists, and Stieber realised that if he could only penetrate the secrets and methods of this important socialistic nucleus, he might prove undoubtedly serviceable to the central government in Berlin. Accordingly he joined the Socialist brotherhood, professing to be entirely in sympathy with their aims and aspirations, and in a short while became an acknowledged leader of the Silesian movement. As a man of superior education, Stieber gained admittance to the family of the firm which employed him, won the heart of his employer's daughter and married her.