Books of the Day
The Great Prussian
Frederick the Great. By Pierre Gaxotte. (Bell. us.)
"WHAT are we, we men, to engender plans which cost so much human blood? " asked Frederick the Great, and how grateful one is to Monsieur Gaxotte for not immediately drawing atten- tion to the equally pacific exclamations once so frequently uttered by Hitler. This biography of Frederick the Great is, in fact, not a pretentious piece of propaganda, but a straightforward historical study by a writer who knows his period and his sources and has laboured to produce an objective portrait. The result, like many eighteenth-century portraits, is perhaps a little cold and bright, but it is exceptionally clear. This is an achievement, for the fog of legend and controversy which obscures national heroes has always been thick about Frederick the Great. He has been slavishly praised and scurrilously abused : so much so that one wonders whether the Nazi law forbidding the defamation of historical figures was not chiefly directed at those smut-hunters whose rootings in . Frederick's private life had depreciated his value as an example to the Hitler Jugend.
Monsieur Gaxotte is perhaps more interested in the personal than in the political aspects of Frederick's life, but his account of his policy is adequate and intelligent. He states his facts succinctly, without much comment, leaving moral judgement to the reader. But he knows his eighteenth century far too well to attack Frederick because his political standards were neither higher nor lower than those of his contemporaries. In these times, when even serious writers allow themselves to generalise about Prussian aggression, it is well to remember that the largest territorial gains made out of Frederick's European wars were made in other continents by the English. As for the so- called Prussian spirit, it was in existence before Frederick's time ; he merely used it, stabilised it and set upon it the seal of success. Of Frederick's military exploits and administrative reforms so much has been written that there is little to add. Monsieur Gaxotte's accounts of the campaigns are lucid if not detailed, and what he says of the development of Frederick's military genius, though little, is very much to the point.
The chief and most interesting problem still remains that of Frederick's personal development. Monsieur Gaxotte is deeply interested in Frederick as a man ; he certainly does not love and I am not at all sure that he even admires him. But he sees him with a vision which is obscured neither by moral disapproval nor by modern comparisons. He sees him as an eighteenth century king and keeps him within the framework of his epoch, never allowing him to take on symbolic or portentous attributes. He tells again vividly the story of the Prince's wretched adolescence, emphasising the stubborn rigidity of his character. Small and physically intimidated by the violence of his father Frederick William, he lied, he deceived, but he never really gave way. The finely sensitive nature was twisted, not altered. Even his old age caught the echoes of his boyhood, when the aged conqueror hobbled through his rococo palace feebly playing old- fashioned airs on his flute. The father might impose his own military tastes, but he could not eradicate what was already there. As Monsieur Gaxotte forcefully brings out, Frederick imbibed French characteristics from his nurses and tutors ; he liked the orderly couplets of French classical poetry, the well-pruned delicacy of their architecture, above all the realism of their out- look. His father, who boasted that he was a practical man, was a dreamer--a king who collected giants for his army, but could not have borne to risk them in a war. For all the discipline, the uniforms and the parades, he no more wanted to use his soldiers for fighting than a collector of rare porcelain would wish to play skittles with Ming vases. Frederick William imagined that his son, with his French dressing-gowns and gloves, would spoil his beautiful army by neglect: so, in fact,' he did, but not by neglect.
But if Frederick had French characteristics he had others Which were pure Hohenzollern. " I want to be quiet," he cried, and " one must learn to be self-sufficient." Vain hopes. A man never at ease with himself, he was for ever struggling to cover UP his insufficiency and inquietude. His personal life was one lone war with himself, one struggle to express the inexpressible. Hence the unreal amours, the passionate friendships, the pursuit of art and letters, of poetry, music and philosophy ; hence the Poses--Frederick Ihe poet, the philosopher, the conqueror, last of all Frederick the shuffling old man with his truckle-bed, his dogs and his snuff. All that he did bears witness to this dis- tressful uneasiness, from the campaign of gratuitous conquest to the building of that absurdly misnamed palace of Sans Souci- as if this side the grave there could be a time or place without
care for him. Dying, he was heard to murmur, "The mountain is passed . . ." A recollection, perhaps, of some half-forgotten march, yet oddly apt to that long life of struggle, that painful
ascent to unrewarding greatness. C. V. WEDGWOOD.
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