The Assault: Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-TimeWile, Frederic William
History
The Assault: Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-Time
Wile, Frederic William
World War, 1914-1918
the German masses might be educated in the inspiring doctrine of
manifest Teuton destiny, as Bernhardi so unblushingly set it forth.
The German War Party’s certificate of incorporation is dated Versailles,
January 18, 1871, when, on the one hundred and seventieth anniversary of
the creation of the Kingdom of Prussia, Bismarck and Moltke crowned
victorious William I of Prussia German Emperor. Cradled in Prussianism,
the German War Party has always been Prussian, rather than German. To
the credit of Bavaria, Saxony, Baden and Wurttemberg be that forever
remembered. Denmark and Austria, during the seven years preceding
Versailles, had had their lessons. Now France lay prostrate, despoiled
of her fairest provinces and financially bled white, as the conqueror
imagined. From that moment the Prussian head began swelling with
invincible self-esteem, to emerge in the succeeding generation in an
insensate and megalomaniac conviction that to the race which had
accomplished what the Germans had achieved nothing was impossible.
"World Power"--Rule or Ruin--became the national slogan.
In the reconstruction years following the 1870-71 campaign non-military
Germany was bent on laying the foundations of Teuton industrial
greatness. The project was vouchsafed no support from the military
hotspurs who, within ten years of Sedan and Paris, did their utmost to
force Bismarck into giving humbled France a fresh drubbing, that her
power to rise from the dust might be crushed for all time. Then the
Prussian War Party demanded that the scalp of Russia be added to its
insatiable belt. Bismarck propitiated the Bernhardis of that day by
thundering in the Reichstag that "We Germans fear God, and nothing else
in this world!" When the Chancellor of Iron burnt that piece of bombast
into the German soul in 1887, a year before William the Speechmaker was
enthroned, he wrote the German War Party’s "platform." Since then it
has had many planks added to it, but all of them have rested squarely
and firmly on the concrete upon which they were imbedded, viz., that
_Furor Teutonicus_ was a power which, when it went forth to slay and
conquer, was invincible because it was filled with naught but the fear
of God. _Nouveau riche_ Germany, with France’s one billion two hundred
and fifty million dollars of gold indemnity in its pocket, ceased to be
the Fatherland of homely virtues, celebrated in song and story, and
became the plethoric Fatherland, drunk with power and wealth won by
arms, the Fatherland which was to adopt the gospel of political
brutality as a new national _Leit-motif_. "We, not the Jews, are God’s
chosen people. Our military prowess and our intellectual superiority
make German _Weltmacht_ manifest destiny. Full steam ahead!" Thus it
was, a generation ago, that the German War Party was launched on its mad
career.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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