240. How often, in such a charge [during manœuvres] has my ear caught the yearning cry of a comrade tearing along beside me: "Donnerwetter, if this were only the real thing!" (wenn das doch Ernst wäre).—Kronprinz Wilhelm, D.I.W., Chapter II.
240a. When the Gordian knot is ready to be cut, God sends the Alexander! Does not the Crown Prince William's confession of his belief in courage as the highest flower of the human spirit, in his book "Deutschland in Waffen," sound like an answer to the longing that thrills through our whole people?—Deutsche Tageszeitung, 5th May, 1913. Nippold, D.C., p. 34.
241. In philosophic form, the idea of the beneficence of war may be traced back to the saying of Heraclitus, "polemos patêr pantôn" [war is the father of everything].... War is held to be a divine institution, a law of the universe, present in all nature; not for nothing do the Indians worship Siva the Destroyer; the warrior is filled with the enthusiasm of destruction; wars purify the atmosphere like thunderstorms....[26] We may here refer to H. Leo's phrase as to the "fresh and joyous war that shall sweep away the scrofulous rabble" [vom "frischen und fröhlichen Krieg, der das skrofulöse Gesindel wegfegen soll."].—J. Burckhardt, W.B., p. 163.
242. The Kaiser may have thought that war was not necessary ... because every year of peace increased the power of the Empire, and because the German hegemony in Europe was safe enough without shedding a drop of blood. To this one may reply that the noblest weapon rusts if its use is too long restricted to reviews and parades ... and that every ascent to a higher mental Kultur impairs the barbaric energy of warriors, and encumbers them with scruples which damp their joyous courage.—M. Harden, Zukunft, 19th August, 1911.
War and Religion.
243. It is no mere chance that the earliest piece of poetry, the oldest three distiches of the Old Testament, the Song of Lamech, is a song of triumph over the invention of the sword. (Genesis, iv., 23):—
Ada and Zillah hear my voice;
Ye wives of Lamech hearken unto my speech:
For I have slain a man for wounding me,
And a young man for bruising me:
If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,
Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.
—E. v. Lasaulx, P.G., p. 85.
244. Perpetual peace is a dream, and it is not even a beautiful dream: war forms part of the eternal order instituted by God.... Without war humanity would sink into materialism.—Count v. Moltke, letter to Bluntschli, 11th December, 1880.
245. To appeal from this judgment to Christianity would be sheer perversity, for does not the Bible distinctly say that the ruler shall rule by the sword, and, again, that greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friend?—H. v. Treitschke, P., Vol. i., p. 67.