Germany -- Foreign relations; Germany -- Intellectual life; Germany -- Politics and government; World War, 1914-1918
And that strength of the State which is its chief attribute must not
be dispersed; that political power must neither be divided nor
alienated. Many writers on politics still echo the absurd theory of
Montesquieu on the division of the executive, legislative, and the
judiciary. Treitschke, following Rousseau, lays down the axiom that
the power of the State is indivisible and inalienable.
XVI.—THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS.
If the one virtue of the State is to be strong and to assert its
strength, it follows that the ethics of the State cannot be the ethics
of the individual. The ruler of the State is not the head of a
monastery or the president of an academy of fine arts. The end must
justify the means, and any means may be employed which will add to the
strength of the State. It is the glory of Frederick the Great that he
has always had the moral courage of brushing away conventions and
scruples to achieve his object, and that he has always had the
political insight and wisdom of adjusting the means to the end.
XVII.—WAR AS THE VITAL PRINCIPLE OF POLITICAL LIFE.
Prussia is not, like France, the result of a thousand years of natural
growth. It has no definite natural boundaries. The Prussian State is
an artificial creation. It has grown and expanded through conquest.
It is the Order of the Teutonic Knights, it is the warrior dynasty of
the Hohenzollern, who have built up Prussian power. That purely
military growth of the Prussian State is made by Treitschke into a
universal rule of all political growth. According to him war always
was and will remain the master-builder of national life. Other
thinkers, like Joseph de Maistre, have glorified war in the name of
theology. Treitschke extols it in the name of politics. War not only
makes a State: it makes the citizen. The heroic virtues are warlike
virtues; they are the outcome of military institutions. It is not war
but peace which is the evil. Woe to the nation which allows itself to
be deceived by the sentiment and cowardice of pacifists.
XVIII.—THE MONARCHY AS THE IDEAL FORM OF GOVERNMENT.
War is the essential activity of the State. But in order to be strong
in war, unity and concentration are essential; they are the conditions
of victory. That unity may, no doubt, be achieved under any form of
government. It may be achieved under a republic, as it was during the
wars of the French Revolution. It may be achieved under an
aristocracy, as in the case of Great Britain, which is a monarchy only
in name, which, in reality, is a Parliamentary oligarchy, and which is
always waging some guerilla in some outlying post of empire. But the
fact remains that unity can be best achieved under a monarchic form of
government, which concentrates all powers into the hands of the
responsible monarch. That is why monarchy is the best form of
government.
XIX.—THE ARISTOCRACY AS THE MAINSTAY OF THE MONARCHIC STATE.
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