(AFTER JULY, 1914.) 378. Perhaps the greatest danger for us Germans--greatest because it does not threaten us from without, but within our own hearts--is our magnanimity. O, there is something glorious about this virtue, and we Germans may be quite particularly proud of possessing it.... But woe to the people which does not stand as one man behind the statesman who, by dint of hard struggles with his own soul, has fought his way to the only true standpoint--namely, that _in international relations magnanimity is wholly out of place_, and that here the voice of expediency can alone be heard.--EIN DEUTSCHER, W.K.B.M., p. 12. 379. Through our policy of peace ... we deprive ourselves of the right of determining the time for bringing about a decision by force of arms, as Bismarck did in three wars, in which, thanks to his diplomatic adroitness, he forced upon his adversaries the outward appearance of declaring war, while in reality Prussia-Germany was the assailant. Bismarck is quoted in Germany as having discouraged preventive wars.... But we must not forget that the three great wars which Bismarck waged were in fact preventive. Even in 1870 the outbreak of war might have been stayed. It was only the brilliant manipulation (_geniale Fassung_) of the Ems telegram that put France in the wrong and drove her into war, just as Bismarck had foreseen.--K. v. STRANTZ, E.S.V., p. 38. 380. For the will of the State, no other principle exists but that of _expediency_ (_Zweckmaessigkeit_), which is at the same time _selfishness_; not, however, the short-sighted selfishness commended by Machiavelli, but _far-seeing, shrewdly-calculating_ selfishness.--EIN DEUTSCHER, W.K.B.M., p. 11. 381. Far-seeing selfishness does not exclude the endeavour to win the confidence of other nations, which can be won only by honesty. _But this honesty, at any rate on vital questions, ought on no account to be carried to the pitch of inexpedient Quixotism._ EIN DEUTSCHER, W.K.B.M., p. 11. 382. War was in our eyes the most honourable and the holiest means of awakening the people from its dazed condition. Whether this war came as an aggressive or as a defensive war was, in principle, a matter of indifference. That it came to us in the form of a war of defence was one of those historical strokes of luck which God vouchsafes to those peoples whom He loves. The time has not yet come to enquire whether the leaders of German foreign policy took deliberate measures to place us in the attitude of defence which the masses always regard as more moral. It may perhaps be so; but it is far from impossible that the disinclination for war which placed certain high dignitaries of the German Empire in constant opposition to the will of the people may have so far imposed upon our adversaries as to induce them to attack us.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 9.