DR. ELIOT'S SECOND LETTER
The Stout and Warlike Breed
To the Editor of The New York Times:
There is nothing new in the obsession of the principal European nations that, in order to be great and successful in the world as it is, they must possess military power available for instant aggression on weak nations, as well as for effective defense against strong ones.
When Sir Francis Bacon wrote his essay on "The True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates" he remarked that forts, arsenals, goodly races of horses, armaments, and the like would all be useless "except the breed and disposition of the people be stout and warlike." He denied that money is the sinews of war, giving preference to the sinews of men's arms, and quoted Solon's remark to Croesus, "Sir, if any other come that hath better iron than you, he will be master of all this gold"—a truly Bismarckian proposition. Indeed, Sir Francis Bacon says explicitly "that the principal point of greatness in any State is to have a race of military men."
Goethe, reflecting on the wretchedness of the German people as a whole, found no comfort in the German genius for science, literature, and art, or only a miserable comfort which "does not make up for the proud consciousness of belonging to a nation strong, respected, and feared." Because Germany in his time was weak in the military sense, he could write: "I have often felt a bitter grief at the thought of the German people, which is so noble individually, and so wretched as a whole"; and he longed for the day when the national spirit, kept alive and hopeful, should be "ready to rise in all its might when the day of glory dawns."
"The day of glory" was to be the day of military power. Carlyle said of Germany and France in November, 1870, "that noble, patient, deep, pious, and solid Germany should be at length welded into a nation, and become Queen of the Continent, instead of vaporing, vainglorious, gesticulating, quarrelsome, restless, and oversensitive France, seems to me that hopefulest public fact that has occurred in my time." How did Germany attain to this position of "Queen of the Continent"? By creating and maintaining, with utmost intelligence and skill, the strongest army in Europe—an army which within six years had been used successfully against Denmark, Austria, and France. Germany became "Queen" by virtue of her military power.
In the same paper Carlyle said of the French Revolution, of which he was himself the great portrayer: "I often call that a celestial infernal phenomenon, the most memorable in our world for a thousand years; on the whole, a transcendent revolt against the devil and his works, (since shams are all and sundry of the devil, and poisonous and unendurable to man.)" Now, the French Revolution was an extraordinary outbreak of passionate feeling and physical violence on the part of the French Nation, both at home and abroad; and it led on to the Napoleonic wars, which were tremendous physical struggles for mastery in Europe.
In a recent public statement two leading philosophical writers of modern Germany, Profs. Eucken and Haeckel, denounce the "brutal national egoism" of England, which they say "recognizes no rights on the part of others, and, unconcerned about morality or unmorality, pursues only its own advantage"; and they attribute to England the purpose to hinder at any cost the further growth of German greatness. But what are the elements of that German greatness which England is determined to arrest by joining France and Russia in war against Germany and Austria-Hungary? The three elements of recent German greatness are the extension of her territory; contiguous territories in Europe and in other continents colonial possessions; the enlargement of German commerce and wealth, and to these ends the firm establishment of her military supremacy in Europe. These are the ideas on the true greatness of nations which have prevailed in the ruling oligarchy of Germany for at least sixty years, and now seem to have been accepted, or acquiesced in, by the whole German people. In this view, the foundation of national greatness is fighting power.
This conception of national greatness has prevailed at many different epochs—Macedonian, Roman, Saracen, Spanish, English, and French—and, indeed, has appeared from time to time in almost all the nations and tribes of the earth; but the civilized world is now looking for better foundations of national greatness than force and fighting.