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].
War and Biology.
256. We children of the future ... do not by any means think it desirable that the kingdom of righteousness and peace should be established on the earth.... We rejoice in all men who, like ourselves, love danger, war and adventure ... we count ourselves among the conquerors; we ponder over the need of a new order of things, even of a new slavery—for every strengthening and elevation of the type "man" also involves a new form of slavery.—Fr. Nietzsche, J.W., section 377.
257. Unless we choose to shut our eyes to the necessity of evolution, we must recognize the necessity of war. We must accept war, which will last as long as development and existence; we must accept eternal war.—K. Wagner, K., p. 153.