In dealing with "Real-politik" (which is the German translation of
Machiavellianism), with "expansion," with "survival of the fittest,"
and all the other shibboleths of world-policy, their outlook remained
as absolute and abstract as before, as contemptuous of temperament and
measure, as blind to those compromises and qualifications, those decencies,
so to speak, of nature, by which reality is constituted. The Germans now
saw men instead of gods, but they saw them as trees walking.
German imperialism, then, while it involves the same intellectual
presuppositions, the same confusions, the same erroneous arguments, the
same short-sighted ambitions, as the imperialism of other countries,
exhibits them all in an extreme degree. All peoples admire themselves. But
the self-adoration of Germans is so naive, so frank, so unqualified, as to
seem sheerly ridiculous to more experienced nations.[1] The English and the
French, too, believe their civilization to be the best in the world. But
English common-sense and French sanity would prevent them from announcing
to other peoples that they proposed to conquer them, morally or materially,
for their good. All Jingoes admire and desire war. But nowhere else in the
modern world is to be found such a debauch of "romantic" enthusiasm, such
a wilful blindness to all the realities of war, as Germany has manifested
both before and since the outbreak of this world-catastrophe.
Pages:
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48