Nietzsche was, as his whole life proved, a man upon the edge of
insanity, who at last went obviously mad. Treitschke was a man of
great brain power, who had an _idée fixe_--a monomania about
Britain. So long as he raved in Berlin, Englishmen took no more
notice than they do of an anarchist howling in the park; for it is
the British theory that a man may say and think what he will so long
as he refrains from doing. But Treitschke was always dangerous. He
was magnetic, eloquent, enthusiastic, flashing wondrous visions of
the future before his listeners, varying in beauty, but always alike
in that they were seen across our prostrate body. Those who are in a
position to judge, like the late Professor Cramb, say that his
influence on young Germany could only be compared with that of
Carlyle and Macaulay united in Great Britain. And now, after his
death, his words have all sprung to deeds to the ruin of his own
country and to the deep misfortune of ours. He used to visit
England, this strange and sinister man, but as he was stone deaf his
bodily presence brought him little nearer to us. With useless ears
and jaundiced eyes he moved among us, returning to Berlin for the
new Semester as ignorant as he had left it, to rail against us once
again. He worked to harm us, and he has done so, but Lord! what is
the worst that he has done to us compared with the irretrievable
ruin that he has brought to his own country! He and Von Tirpitz,
Count Bieberstein, Maximilian Harden and a few more, to say nothing
of the head plotter of all--a fine Germany they will leave behind
them! Treitschke is dead, and so is Bieberstein, but a good many of
their dupes may live to see the day when Indian princes ride as
conquerors down Unter den Linden and the shattered remains of the
braggadocio statues of the Sieges Allée, that vulgar monument of
bastard Imperialism, will expiate the honoured ashes of Louvain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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