WHAT IS WRONG WITH GERMANY?
"Thinking calms men of other nations ; it inflames the Germans." —(Mine. do StabTs "Da l'AUentagne").
rPHE title that we have chosen for this article, as will I_ be seen from our review columns, is taken from an excellent and popular book on certain aspects of German life and politics just published by Mr. W. H. Dawson. Mr. Dawson shows ns in detail and by lavish quotations from the speeehes and writings of prominent Germans, from the Emperor downwards, how, why, when, and where the Germans have taken the wrong turning, and exchanged their former idealism, wholesomeness, and humanity for a base and materialistic form of culture. We desire, however, to-day to try to go a little further than Mr. Dawson, though we admit the danger of doing so—the danger of adopting the very methods which we condemn in the Germans.
We believe that, if the inquiry is to be pushed to the ultimate point, what is wrong with the Germans is their dreadful, their slavish devotion to Logic— to the "Absolute" and to Abstractions. When English- men create an Abstraction they do not call upon all mankind to enthrone it. They treat it as some- thing which is " there or thereabouts," as something useful, no doubt, but not to be pressed too far. When the Germans create an Abstraction they fall down and worship it. They not only treat it with intellectual servility, but regard it as a living thing. When their Abstraction is once established, they will not place any limits on its authority. They follow it ruth- lessly, relentlessly, remorselessly, and to the bitter end. The result is what we see in the world to-day—the earth reeking with blood, Belgium, Poland, and some of the fairest parts of France drinking the cup of suffering to the dregs, and millions of men by land and sea locked in a death struggle. Truly did Mme. de Steel use the words which we have placed as a motto to this article—" Thinking calms men of other nations; it inflames the Germans." They are maddened by an Abstraction, but they adore it. Frankenstein had to obey the monster he created, but he loathed and feared it. Germany, the new Frankenstein, worships her creations, and is willing to follow them through blood and fire, no matter what the consequence to herself or to the rest of mankind.
There are plenty of examples to show what a dreadful and dangerous thing is an Abstraction if once it is allowed to gain possession of a nation's mind, and how limitless as well as pitiless is the sweep of its scythe. Take the German conception of the State. Treitschke, following and developing the theories of political philosophers from Machiavelli onwards, declares that the State is power. "The State," he says, "is not an Academy of Arts and Sciences, still less a Stock Exchange. It is power, and therefore it contradicts its own nature if it neglects the Army." Again he says : " The State must not be regarded as an invention—as a thing which might not have existed. It is as impossible to imagine men without a State as a forest without trees." "The State is power" sounds innocent enough. Yet from this apparently innocuous creation of the philosopher's closet bate been deduced some of the most shameless, cruel, and revolting principles of political action that the world has ever known. In the first place, iE the State is power, only strong States are worthy of existence. Hence Treitschke'e condemnation of the small State as a worthless and contemptible thing. Next, if the State is power, self-preservation must be its first duty, because there is no power without self-preservation.
Again, since Abstractions are fissiparous and breed other Abstractions with lightning speed, we get the mass of ideas connected with Sovereignty—as, for example, the proposition that Sovereignty by its very nature is illimitable. If the State is to be really sovereign, and no one has the right to put any limits to its powers, how can we say that treaties must always be respected ? If they are to be preserved where they operate to the hurt of the State, the sovereignty of the State disappears. Treaties, then, have no binding force unless they are convenient—i.e., fall in with the policy of the State. As Treitschke puts it again, "in concluding treaties the State does so always with the tacit reservation that there is no power beyond and above it to which it is responsible, and it must be the sole judge as to whether it is expedient to respect its obligations." Here is the full-blown theory of the "scrap of paper." The State, in fact, can do no wrong. As Bernhardi says in Germany and the Next War, aptly quoted by Mr. Dawson, "the morality of the State must be judged by the nature and raison d'elre of the State and not of the individual citizen." However, there is no necessity to elaborate this point any further. We see the vile thing at work.
As the power of the State involves the safety of the State, we next arrive at that loathsome Abstraction, the law of political and military necessity, to which all considerations of faith, honour, and humanity must bow. If the Moloch of the State not only demands the blood of its own people, but the blood of the men, women, and children of a neigh- bouring State like Belgium, there is nothing more to be said. It must be fed with that awful food. And not only must Moloch be fed ; Moloch must be worshipped. The State, as conceived by the German philosophers, requires its daily prostration, like the Holy Places of the Mohammedans. But if those things are evil
and terrible in the hands of the philosopher when he con- templates the State as a civil entity, they become a thousand times worse when the State goes forth to war and the nation becomes an army. As Field-Marshal von der Goitz has laid down, "inexorability and Beamingly hideous callousness are among the attributes necessary to him who would achieve great things in war." Here is the eaglet of " frightfulness "—full-fledged and screaming for blood. No doubt a good many people, having read so far, will be inclined to think that we are not fair to the Germans, or, rather, that we are pushing our point as to the fatal force and imposture of Abstractions too far. They will tell us that all nations are inclined to serve Abstractions ; that we and the French and Russians do it also ; and that, if the Germans are a little more thorough in the matter, we must not indict a whole nation on that account, or, if we do, we must indict ourselves also. We admit that there is a certain truth in this. There are in us, however, national characteristics which save us from the worst results of following Abstractions. We carry within us the British antiseptic of moderation, of what we may term the Whig spirit—a spirit which is always saying : "Do not push your logic too far. Remember that if your premisses are wrong —and you can never be quite sure that they are right— you may make a hideous mess of things. Never exalt theories unduly. If you regard them as good working hypotheses applicable at a particular time and in a par- ticular place, you will probably be safe enough. If you treat them as absolute truths, you will be sure to get into difficulties and dangers. Do not forget what Burke said: ' Nothing absolute can be affirmed on any moral or political subject.' "
And so we jog on. We can give our lives for our country as unreservedly as any German, but we can do so without exalting the State into a bloodstained Moloch. We can serve the State without being its slaves, and, proudly illogical, can admit sovereignty for some purposes and not for others. Yet we can always keep a reserve of independence and feel that neither King nor Council, State nor nation, has the right to force us beyond the limits of justice and humanity. The sacred right of insurrection may be a logical absurdity, but it is very useful. We may be quite sure, again, that, if the British Army were to be told to treat a German province as the Germans have treated Belgium, nothing would happen. Tho orders would, in practice, not be carried out. In the same way France has an antiseptic against abstractionism which serves her welL The French are great lovers of the Absolute. But, happily for them, they are not cool-blooded like the Germans, but a passionate people, and their passion will at any moment sweep their absolutism into the dustbin. The Russians, again, though at first sight it looks as if the Slavonic nature were steeped in Abstractions, have a certain whimsicality, or, if you will, somnambulistic power, which saves them from the evil results of the worship of Abstraction. A Russian's Abstractions are soon drowned in the ocean of his dreams.
What will cure the Germans of this mental disease ? Nothing, we may feel, except failure. If they win, they will be ten times more the children of Intellectualism gone mad than they were before, and the world for a time will be ruled by Moloch. If, however, they fail, mankind will see where the worship of the Abstract ends. Here, then, is yet another reason why Germany must not win. Until she is defeated, the world can never give its heart its rights—never let pity and ruth and human kindliness and charity and love have the dominion over the passions of hate, terror, and envy.
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