Emer de Vattel (1714–67) was a prominent Swiss scholar of international law. His The Law of Nations, originally published in 1758, portrayed the law as an evolving standard based on actual practice rather than as an idealistic formulation of how nations ought to behave. Vattel’s work was highly influential in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and was published in multiple editions.
§47. Political equilibrium. Europe forms a political system, an integral body, closely connected by the relations and different interests of the nations inhabiting this part of the world. It is not, as formerly, a confused heap of detached pieces, each of which thought herself very little concerned in the fate of the others, and seldom regarded things which did not immediately concern her. The continual attention of sovereigns to every occurrence, the constant residence of ministers, and the perpetual negotiations, make of modern Europe a kind of republic, of which the members—each independent, but all linked together by the ties of common interest—unite for the maintenance of order and liberty. Hence arose that famous scheme of the political balance, or the equilibrium of power; by which is understood such a disposition of things, as that no one potentate be able absolutely to predominate, and prescribe laws to the others.
§48. Ways of maintaining it. The surest means of preserving that equilibrium would be, that no power should be much superior to the others,—that all, or at least the greater part, should be nearly equal in force. Such a project has been attributed to Henry the Fourth [King of France, 1589–1610]: but it would have been impossible to carry it into execution without injustice and violence. Besides, suppose such equality once established, how could it always be maintained by lawful means? Commerce, industry, military pre-eminence, would soon put an end to it. The right of inheritance, vesting even in women and their descendents,—a rule, which it was so absurd to establish in the case of sovereignties, but which nevertheless is established,—would completely overturn the whole system.
It is a more simple, an easier, and a more equitable plan, to have recourse to the method just mentioned, of forming confederacies in order to oppose the more powerful potentate, and prevent him from giving law to his neighbors. Such is the mode at present pursued by the sovereigns of Europe. They consider the two principal powers, which on that very account are naturally rivals, as destined to be checks on each other; and they unite with the weaker, like so many weights thrown into the lighter scale, in order to keep it in equilibrium with the other. The house of Austria has long been the preponderating power: at present France is so in her turn. England, whose opulence and formidable fleets have a powerful influence, without alarming any state on the score of its liberty, because that nation seems cured of the rage of conquest,—England, I say, has the glory of holding the political balance. She is attentive to preserve it in equilibrium:—a system of policy, which is in itself highly just and wise, and will ever entitle her to praise, as long as she continues to pursue it only by means of alliances, confederacies, and other methods equally lawful.
§49. How he who destroys the equilibrium may be restrained, or even weakened. Confederacies would be a sure mode of preserving the equilibrium, and thus maintaining the liberty of nations, did all princes thoroughly understand their true interests, and make the welfare of the state serve as the rule in all their proceedings. Great potentates, however, are but too successful in gaining over partisans and allies, who blindly adopt all their views. Dazzled by the glare of a present advantage, seduced by their avarice, deceived by faithless ministers,—how many princes become the tools of a power which will one day swallow up either themselves or their successors! The safest plan, therefore, is to seize the first favorable opportunity when we can, consistently with justice, weaken that potentate who destroys the equilibrium—or to employ every honorable means to prevent his acquiring too formidable a degree of power. For that purpose, all the other nations should be particularly attentive not to suffer him to aggrandize himself by arms: and this they may at all times do with justice. For if this prince makes an unjust war, every one has a right to succor the oppressed party. If he makes a just war, the neutral nations may interfere as mediators for an accommodation,—they may induce the weaker state to propose reasonable terms and offer a fair satisfaction,—and may save her from falling under the yoke of a conqueror. On the offer of equitable conditions to the prince who wages even the most justifiable war, he has all that he can demand. The justice of his cause, as we shall soon see, never gives him a right to subjugate his enemy, unless when that extremity becomes necessary to his own safety, or when he has no other mode of obtaining indemnification for the injury he has received. Now, that is not the case here, as the interposing nations can by other means procure him a just indemnification, and an assurance of safety.
In fine, there cannot exist a doubt, that, if that formidable potentate certainly entertain designs of oppression and conquest,—if he betray his views by his preparations and other proceedings,—the other states have a right to anticipate him: and if the fate of war declares in their favour, they are justifiable in taking advantage of this happy opportunity to weaken and reduce a power too contrary to the equilibrium, and dangerous to the common liberty.
Source: Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations; or, Principles of the Law of Nature, applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns. From the French of Monsieur de Vattel. From the New Edition by Joseph Chitty, with additional notes and references by Edward D. Ingraham (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1883), http://
Richard Cobden (1804–1865) was a successful merchant and factory owner in Manchester, England. His travels abroad convinced him that free trade could bring about a more peaceful and prosperous world, and this led him to become involved in politics. In 1838 he cofounded the Anti–Corn Law League, an organization seeking the repeal of high tariffs against imported grain. He was elected to Parliament in 1841, where he finally achieved the repeal of the Corn Laws five years later. Cobden also advocated a noninterventionist foreign policy and denounced Britain’s involvement in the Crimean War and the Opium Wars. In this, one of his earlier speeches, he dismisses the balance of power as a “chimera” useful only as a pretext for war.
Our history during the last century may be called the tragedy of “British intervention in the politics of Europe;” in which princes, diplomatists, peers, and generals have been the authors and actors—the people the victims; and the moral will be exhibited to the latest posterity in 800 millions of debt.
We have said that our proposal to reduce our armaments will be opposed upon the plea of maintaining a proper attitude, as it is called, amongst the nations of Europe. British intervention in the state policy of the Continent has been usually excused under the two stock pretences of maintaining the balance of power in Europe, and of protecting our commerce; upon which two subjects, as they bear indirectly on the question in hand, we shall next offer a few observations.
The first instance in which we find the “balance of power” alluded to in a king’s speech is on the occasion of the last address of William III. to his Parliament, December 31, 1701, where he concludes by saying—“I will only add this—if you do in good earnest desire to see England hold the balance of Europe, it will appear by your right improving the present opportunity.” From this period down to almost our time (latterly indeed, the phrase has become, like many other cant terms, nearly obsolete), there will be found, in almost every successive king’s speech, a constant recurrence to the “balance of Europe;” by which, we may rest assured, war always means, however it might be concealed under pretended alarm for the “equilibrium of power” or the “safety of the Continent,” the desire to see England “hold the balance.” The phrase was found to please the public ear; it implied something of equity; whilst England, holding the balance of Europe in her hand, sounded like filling the office of Justice herself to one half of the globe. Of course such a post of honour could not be maintained, or its dignity asserted, without a proper attendance of guards and officers, and we consequently find that at about this period of our history large standing armies began to be called for; and not only were the supplies solicited by the government from time to time under the plea of preserving the liberties of Europe, but in the annual mutiny bill (the same in form as is now passed every year) the preamble stated, amongst other motives, that the annual army was voted for the purpose of preserving the balance of power in Europe. The “balance of power,” then, becomes an important practical subject for investigation. It appeals directly to the business and bosoms of our readers, since it is implicated with an expenditure of more than a dozen millions of money per annum, every farthing of which goes, in the shape of taxation, from the pockets of the public.
Such of our readers as have not investigated this subject will not be a little astonished to find a great discrepancy in the several definitions of what is actually meant by the “balance of power.” The theory—for it has never yet been applied to practice—appears, after upwards of a century of acknowledged existence, to be less understood now than ever. Latterly, indeed, many intelligent and practical-minded politicians have thrown the question overboard, along with that of the balance of trade, of which number, without participating in their favoured attributes, we claim to be ranked as one. The balance of power, which has for a hundred years been the burden of kings’ speeches, the theme of statesmen, the ground of solemn treaties, and the cause of wars; which has served, down to the very year in which we write, and which will, no doubt, continue to serve for years to come as a pretence for maintaining enormous standing armaments by land and sea, at a cost of many hundreds of millions of treasure—the balance of power is a chimera! It is not a fallacy, a mistake, an imposture, it is an undescribed, indescribable, incomprehensible nothing; mere words, conveying to the mind not ideas, but sounds like those equally barren syllables which our ancestors put together for the purpose of puzzling themselves about words.…
… At what epoch did the nations of the Continent subscribe to that constitution “by virtue of which,” according to Gentz, “no one among them can injure the independence or essential rights of another?” Did this constitution exist whilst Britain was spoiling the Dutch at the Cape or in the east? or when she dispossessed France of Canada? or (worse outrage by far) did it exist when England violated the “essential rights” of Spain by taking forcible and felonious possession of a portion of her native soil? Had this constitution been subscribed by Russia, Prussia, and Austria at the moment when they signed the partition of Poland? or by France when she amalgamated with a portion of Switzerland? By Austria at the acquisition of Lombardy? by Russia when dismembering Sweden, Turkey, and Persia? or by Prussia before incorporating Silesia?
So far from any such confederation having ever been, by written, verbal, or implied agreement, entered into by the “European powers, obeying certain laws, and actuated in general by a common principle;” the theory of the balance of power has, we believe, generally been interpreted, by those who, from age to age, have, parrotlike, used the phrase, to be a system invented for the very purpose of supplying the want of such a combination. Regarding it for a moment in this point of view, we should still expect to find that the “balancing system” had, at some period of modern history, been recognised and agreed to by all the Continental states; and that it had created a spirit of mutual concession and guarantee, by which the weaker and more powerful empires were placed upon a footing of equal security, and by which any one potentate or state was absolutely unable “to predominate over the others.” But, instead of any such self-denial, we discover that the balance of Europe has merely meant (if it has had a meaning) that which our blunt Dutch king openly avowed as his aim to his parliament—a desire, on the part of the great powers, to “hold the balance of Europe.” England has, for nearly a century, held the European scales—not with the blindness of the goddess of justice herself, or with a view to the equilibrium of opposite interests, but with a Cyclopean eye to her own aggrandisement. The same lust of conquest has actuated, up to the measure of their abilities, the other great powers; and, if we find the smaller states still, in the majority of instances, preserving their independent existence, it is owing, not to the watchful guardianship of the “balancing system,” but to the limits which nature herself has set to the undue extension of territorial dominion—not only by the physical boundaries of different countries, but in those still more formidable moral impediments to the invader—the unity of language, laws, customs, and traditions; the instinct of patriotism and freedom; the hereditary rights of rulers; and, though last not least, that homage to the restraints of justice which nations and public bodies have in all ages avowed, however they may have found excuses for evading it.
So far, then, as we can understand the subject, the theory of a balance of power is a mere chimera—a creation of the politician’s brain—a phantasm, without definite form or tangible existence—a mere conjunction of syllables, forming words which convey sound without meaning. Yet these words have been echoed by the greatest orators and statesmen of England … ay, even whilst we were in the act of stripping the maritime nations of the Continent of their colonies, then regarded as the sole source of commercial greatness; whilst we stood sword in hand upon the neck of Spain, or planted our standard on the rock of Malta; and even when England usurped the dominion of the ocean, and attempted to extend the sphere of human despotism over another element, by insolently putting barriers upon that highway of nations—even then the tongues of our orators resounded most loudly with the praises of the “balance of power!” There would be something peculiarly humiliating in connection with this subject, in beholding the greatest minds of successive ages, instead of exercising the faculty of thought, become the mere automata of authority, and retail, with less examination than the haberdasher bestows upon the length, breadth, and quality of his wares, the sentiments bequeathed from former generations of writers and speakers—but that, unhappily, the annals of philosophy and of past religions afford too many examples of the triumph of mere imitativeness over the higher faculties of the human intellect.…
The balance of power, then, might in the first place, be very well dismissed as chimera, because no state of things, such as the “disposition,” “constitution,” or “union” of European powers referred to as the basis of their system, by Vattel,1 Gentz,2 and Brougham,3 ever did exist; and, secondly, the theory could, on other grounds, be discarded as fallacious, since it gives no definition—whether by breadth of territory, number of inhabitants, or extent of wealth—according to which, in balancing the respective powers, each state shall be estimated; whilst, lastly, it would be altogether incomplete and inoperative from neglecting, or refusing to provide against, the silent and peaceful aggrandisements which spring from improvement and labour.…
Source: Richard Cobden, The Political Writings of Richard Cobden, F. W. Chesson, ed. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1903, Library of Economics and Liberty, http://
On April 8, 1914, the Times of London ran this editorial, praising the balance of power for having safeguarded the peace of Europe despite numerous international crises. The article was carried by many other newspapers throughout Europe in the days and weeks to follow.
It is ten years to-day since the signature of the Agreements which embody the Entente between England and France. They have been momentous years. They have witnessed immense changes, and changes fraught with the utmost peril to peace. The war between Japan and Russia, the collapse of two great monarchies in Asia, and revolution in a third, the downfall of Morocco as a sovereign State, and the creation of the French protectorate, the conclusion of the Anglo-Russian agreement, the incorporation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Dual Monarchy, the African conquests of Italy, and the wars of the Balkan allies against Turkey and amongst themselves, have been amongst the events which they have seen. Anxious care, mutual suspicions, and at certain moments, acute alarm, have filled the Cabinets of Europe, while they have passed away. All these transformations, great in themselves, and pregnant with yet greater consequences, have been accomplished, and no Great Power has drawn the sword against another. That, we are firmly convinced, has been due, in the first place, to the great act of reconciliation we commemorate to-day. It was not a mere piece of statecraft. It was more than a sagacious arrangement for the accommodation of old controversies and the promotion of common interests. It was accepted by two great nations, frankly and without reserve, as the basis and as the consecration of a firm and abiding friendship. That is the vital principle of the Entente. That has made it thrive and grow with the years. That has enabled it to withstand all strains from within and from without. That leaves it deep-rooted to-day, with the promise of fresh growth and fresh developments to come. For ten troubled years it has stood the test. It has been exposed to many searching ordeals. Open assault and furtive sap, brutal menace and subtle intrigue have not been spared against it. All has been in vain. The Entente, expanded and supplemented by the Anglo-Russian Agreement, remains the bedrock of its members’ whole international policy and an essential bulwark of the world’s peace.
The Anglo-French agreement had not been signed a year when the first efforts were made to destroy it. Scarce had the news of Russia’s final defeat at Mukden4 reached Europe, when the German Emperor hurried to Tangier to make ostentatious proffers of protection to Morocco.5 Russia, for whose Asiatic adventure Germany had had nothing but encouragement and praise, was manifestly unable to give her French ally effectual support. From complaisance for her pacifists France herself had neglected her means of defence. What better moment could there be to punish her audacity in having a foreign policy of her own, and to demonstrate the impotence of her allies and of her friends to save her from the wrath of Prussia-Germany? We need not dwell here upon the history of the campaign that followed. Prince Bülow, who had declared a few months before that the Entente did not hurt German interests, now discovered that France had insulted Germany by neglecting to supplement the communication of the arrangement which she had made to the German Ambassador before it was signed by an official notification after it had been signed. The whole German Press was mobilized to threaten France, and all the strength of German diplomacy was exerted to ensure the sacrifice of the statesman who had triumphantly shattered the cherished tradition of the Wilhelmstrasse6 that friendship between France and England was inconceivable. The sacrifice was made. The Radical capitalists threw over M. Delcassé.7 Germany had her will, and forced France to assent to the Algeciras Conference. But there she learnt what the Entente means, and there she brought that lesson home to France, as no parchments and no protestations on our part could have done. When the Conference was over the whole world realized that we were ready to support by all means at our command the reasonable and legitimate claims of France, and in particular her claim to treat, and be treated by, every Great Power in all respects an equal. We had vindicated once again the continuous tradition of our national life, which rejects and resists pretensions from any quarter to the hegemony of Europe. The bonds of the Entente were drawn closer than before, and the way prepared for its necessary and logical completion by the conclusion two years later of our Agreement with Russia.
From that time forward the Triple Alliance has found its counterpoise in the balance of power. It is the equilibrium thus established which enabled France to emerge unhumiliated from the dubious intrigues into which she was lured during the Monis and Caillaux Ministries,8 and to sustain with tranquil dignity the challenge of Agadir. It is this which has made it possible for other powers to see the formidable question of the Near East opened in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Tripoli, and in the Balkans without rushing to arms. It is this which led them during the most acute periods of the prolonged crisis in that peninsula to discuss their conflicting interests and desires with restraint and moderation through their Ambassadors in London. It is this which leaves their relations in all cases correct, and in almost all cases friendly, to-day. It is this which affords the world its best hopes of peace in the future. The division of the Great Powers into two well-balanced groups with intimate relations between the members of each, which do not forbid any such member from being on the friendliest terms with one or two members of the other, is a twofold check upon the inordinate ambitions or sudden outbursts of race hatred. All Sovereigns and statesmen—aye, and all nations—know that a war of group against group would be a measureless calamity. That knowledge brings with it a sense of responsibility which chastens and restrains the boldest and the most reckless. But they know, too, that to secure the support of the other members of their own group and to induce them to share the responsibility and the risks of such a conflict, any Power or Powers which may meditate recourse to arms must first satisfy these other members that the quarrel is necessary and just. They are no longer unfettered judges in their own case, answerable to none but to themselves. That the Triple Entente bears the character we have ascribed to it, and has been for some years one of the twin pillars on which the peace of Europe and of Asia rests, is proved by the facts we have recounted. It is proved as well by the recorded statements made on behalf of Germany and of Russia. After the Björkö meeting9 of the two Emperors in 1909 it was officially declared that the international arrangements to which those countries were parties were in no way opposed to the good relations between them, while an inspired newspaper remarked that “in the recent difficult times” the grouping of the Powers “had thoroughly stood the test.” Still more explicit and significant is the communiqué issued after the Port Baltic meeting10 of the same potentates in 1912. Then it was proclaimed that both new agreements and alterations of any kind in the grouping of the European Powers were out of the question. “The value of that grouping,” it was added, “for the maintenance of equilibrium and of peace has already been proved.” It has been proved continuously and yet more clearly in the vicissitudes which have occurred since those words were written. The balance of power is now the cardinal factor in the policy of the Old World. We owe it and all the developments it may bring to the Entente which is ten years old to-day.
Source: “The Bulwark of Peace,” Times of London, April 8, 1914, 14.
Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–96) was a distinguished German historian and political theorist. He also served in the Reichstag, where he was an unapologetic supporter of monarchism as well as a fervent German nationalist. Politics was a collection of his lectures assembled by his students at the University of Berlin after his death. The selections that follow deal with international law, which he argues can never be laid down as a set of hard-and-fast rules. Ultimately, Treitschke believes that national interest must trump all other considerations.
It is essential … to go to work historically, and to consider the State as what it is as physical force, though at the same time as an institution intended to assist the education of the human race. In so far as it is physical force, the State will have a natural inclination to snatch for itself such earthly possessions as it desires for its own advantage. It is by its very nature grasping. Every State will, however, of its own accord, show a certain consideration for neighboring States. As a result of reasoned calculation, as well as from a mutual sense of their own advantage, the States will exhibit an increasing respect for justice. The State comes to realize that it is bound up with the common life of the States among which it is situated. Every State will, as a matter of course, observe certain restraints in its dealings with neighboring States. From reasoned calculation, from a reciprocal recognition of self-interest, a more definite sense of justice will develop with the course of time. The formal part of International Law for instance, the theory of the inviolability of ambassadors, with all its accompanying ceremonial developed comparatively early and securely. In modern Europe the privileges of Ambassadors, with all that this entails, are absolutely secure. It is safe to say that the formal side of International Law is much more firmly established and is much less frequently transgressed than are the rules of municipal justice in most States. Nevertheless, since there is placed above the States no higher power which can decide between them, the existence of International Law is always precarious. It always must remain a lex imperfecta.11 Everything depends upon reciprocity; and, since there is no supreme authority capable of exercising compulsion, the influence of science, and, above all, of public opinion, will play an important part. Savigny12 declared International Law to be … a law in constant process of evolution. This, however, by no means implies that International Law is void of meaning. This evolving law has indeed a palpable effectiveness, the consequences of which we can trace in their developments up to the present day. There can be no doubt that the development of modern International Law was very materially influenced by Christianity. Christianity created a spirit of cosmopolitanism, in the noblest sense of the word; and it was therefore only reasonable and logical that, for centuries, the Porte13 should not have come within the province of European International Law. The Porte was not in a position to profit fully by the benefits of European International Law, so long as it was exclusively swayed by Mohammedan14 ideas of morality. It is only in recent times, since Christianity has become so strong in the Balkan Peninsula as to thrust Mohammedanism comparatively into the background, that the Porte has been invited to participate in international negotiations.
History shows us that great States are continually developing out of small States which have outlived their vitality. The great States must finally attain such a measure of power that they can stand on their own feet, that they are self-sufficing. Such a State must desire that peace should be maintained, for the sake of its existence and for that of the treasures of civilization which it has under its care. So, out of this common sense of justice, there ensues an organized society of States, a so-called political system. Such a system is, however, impossible, apart from a certain at least approximate equilibrium between the Powers. The idea of a balance of power in Europe was at first, as we have seen, conceived very literally; but it does contain a germ of truth. We must not think of it as a trutina gentium,15 with both scales on the same level; but an organized political system presupposes that no one State shall be so powerful as to be able to do just as it pleases without danger to itself. Here we see very clearly the superiority of the European system over the crude state-system of America. In America the United States can do just as they please. It is only because their ties with the small South American Republics are still very slight that the latter have not yet suffered any direct interference on the part of their great neighbor.
… It is very unfortunate for the science of International Law that countries like Belgium and Holland should so long have been its home. These countries, because they are in constant fear of being attacked, take a sentimental view of the subject, and tend to make claims on the victor in the name of humanity, claims which are unnatural and unreasonable and contrary to the power of the State. The treaties of Nijmegen and Ryswick16 remind us that, in the seventeenth century, Holland was looked upon as the proper scene for the drama of la haute politique.17 Switzerland, at a later date, enjoyed the same reputation. And, at the present day, few people trouble to think how absurd it is that Belgium should fondly conceive herself to be the center of International Jurisprudence. As certainly as that public law is founded on practice, it follows that a State which occupies an abnormal position will form an abnormal conception of International Law. Belgium is neutral; it is by its nature an emasculated State. Is such a State likely to develop a healthy notion of International Law? I beg you to keep this consideration firmly in your minds hereafter, when you are confronted with the mass of Belgian literature on this subject. On the other hand, there exists to-day another State, which fancies itself in the position of being able to make an attack at any moment, and which is consequently the stronghold of barbarism in International Law. It is the fault of England alone that the provisions of International Law which relate to maritime warfare still sanction the practice of privileged piracy. So we are brought to realize that, since reciprocity is the very basis of International Law, it is of no use to hold up vague phrases and doctrines of humanity as the rule of conduct for States to follow; all theory must be founded on practice; only then does an understanding become genuinely reciprocal. That is a true balance of the Powers.
If we are to avoid misconception concerning the significance of International Law, we must bear in mind that all the International Law in the world cannot alter the essential nature of the State. No State can reasonably be called upon to agree to something which would amount to suicide. Even in the State-system, every individual State must still preserve its own sovereignty; even in its intercourse with other States, the preservation of this sovereignty is still its highest duty. The enduring provisions of International Law are those which do not affect sovereignty, that is to say, those concerned with ceremonial and with international private law. In time of peace it is hardly probable that these rights will be infringed; if they are, such infringements will be immediately expiated. Anyone who, even superficially, attacks the honor of a State, challenges by his action the very nature of the State. To reproach a State for having a too irritable sense of honor is to fail to appreciate the moral laws of politics. A State must have a very highly-developed sense of honor, if it is not to be disloyal to its own nature. The State is not a violet blooming in the shade. Its power must stand forth proud and refulgent, and it must not allow this power to be disputed, even in matters of forms and symbols. If the flag of the State is insulted, it is the duty of the State to demand satisfaction, and, if satisfaction is not forthcoming, to declare war, however trivial the occasion may appear; for the State must strain every nerve to preserve for itself that respect which it enjoys in the State-system.
From this it also follows that the limitations which States impose upon themselves by means of treaties are voluntary self-limitations, and that all treaties are concluded with the mental reservation rebus sic stantibus.18 There never has been a State, and there never will be a State, which, in concluding a treaty, seriously intended to keep it forever. No State is in a position to conclude a treaty (which necessarily implies a certain limitation of its sovereignty) for all time to come. The State always has in mind the possibility of annulling the treaty at some future date; and indeed the treaty is only valid so long as the conditions under which it was made have not entirely altered. This idea has been declared inhuman, but actually it is humane. Only if the State knows that all its treaties have only a conditional validity, will it make its treaties wisely. History is not meant to be considered from the standpoint of a judge presiding over a civil lawsuit. From this point of view Prussia, since she had signed the Tilsit treaty,19 ought not to have attacked Napoleon in 1813. But this treaty, too, was concluded rebus sic stantibus; and the circumstances (thank God!) had fundamentally changed even in those few years. A noble nation was given the opportunity of freeing itself from an insupportable slavery; and, as soon as a nation perceives such an opportunity, it is justified in daring to take advantage of it.
We must never lose sight in politics of the free moral forces of national life. No State in the world is to renounce that egotism which belongs to its sovereignty. If conditions are imposed on a State which would degrade it, to which it could not adhere, these conditions will be more honored in the breach than in the observance. History reveals one very beautiful fact: that a State recovers more easily from material losses than from attacks upon its honor. The loss of a province may be endured as a necessity imposed by prudence; but to endure under compulsion a state of slavery is an ever-open wound to a noble people. Napoleon, by the constant presence of his troops on Prussian soil, infused a glowing hatred into the veins of the most long-suffering. When a State is conscious that its honor has been insulted, the renunciation of a treaty is only a question of time. England and France experienced this in 1870, after the Crimean War, when they had arrogantly imposed upon exhausted Russia the condition that Russian warships should no longer be allowed in the Black Sea; and, when Russia took advantage of the good opportunity afforded by the Franco-German War to renounce this treaty, with the tacit support of Germany, she was doing no more than was morally justifiable.
When a State realizes that existing treaties no longer express the actual relations between the Powers, then, if it cannot bring the other contracting State to acquiescence by friendly negotiations, there is nothing for it but the international lawsuit War. Under such circumstances, a State declares war with the consciousness of fulfilling an absolute duty. No motives of personal gain are involved. The protagonists have simply perceived that existing treaties no longer correspond with their actual relations, and, since the matter cannot be decided peaceably, it must be decided by the great international lawsuit War. The justice of war depends simply on the consciousness of a moral necessity. Since there cannot be, and ought not to be, any arbitrary power placed above the great personalities which we call nations, and since history must be in an eternal flux, war is justified. War must be conceived as an institution ordained of God. A State may, of course, form a mistaken judgment concerning the inevitability of war. Niebuhr says truly: “War does not establish any right that did not already exist.” Individual acts of violence are expiated in the very moment that they are performed. It was thus that the unity of Germany and of Italy were achieved. On the other hand, not every war has an inevitable result, and the historian must therefore preserve an open mind; he must remember that the lives of States are counted in centuries. The proud saying of the vanquished Piedmontese, “We begin again”20 will always have its place in the history of noble nations.
War will never be expelled from the world by international courts of arbitration. In any great question which concerns a nation’s life it is simply impossible for the other members of the State-system to remain impartial. They must be partial, because they are members of a living community, mutually bound together or held apart by a diversity of interests. Supposing that such a foolish thing were possible as that Germany should allow the question of Alsace-Lorraine to be decided by a court of arbitration, which of the European nations would be capable of viewing the question impartially? Such a thing is not to be dreamed of. Hence the well-known fact that International Congresses are able to formulate the results of a war, and to decide upon it juridically, but that they are powerless to avert a war that is threatening. It is only in questions of the third rank that a foreign State can possibly be impartial.
Source: H.W.C. Davis, The Political Thought of Heinrich von Treitschke (London: Constable and Company, 1914), 173–79.
Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72) was born in Genoa and was involved in various liberal and nationalist organizations from a young age. In 1831 he formed a secret society called Young Italy, dedicated to Italian unification; within two years it had a membership of some 60,000, mainly from the cities of northern Italy. Again and again he spearheaded efforts to overthrow Austrian-backed regimes in Italy, and at one point was named part of a triumvirate governing a “Republic of Italy” created during the Revolutions of 1848. However, these all failed, and he spent much of the 1830s and 1840s in exile in Switzerland, Paris, and London. In 1844 he began writing his most famous work, An Essay on the Duties of Man Addressed to Workingmen, in which he made the intellectual and spiritual case for liberal nationalism, based on the principles of republicanism and political and social equality. When Italy was finally united in 1861 under the rule of King Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont, Mazzini wanted nothing to do with it, turning down a seat in the new Italian Chamber of Deputies and even attempting a rebellion in Sicily in 1870, for which he was briefly imprisoned. The king, however, granted an amnesty to his political opponents, and Mazzini settled in Pisa, where he died in 1872.
Your first duties—first as regards importance—are, as I have already told you, towards Humanity. You are men before you are either citizens or fathers. If you do not embrace the whole human family in your affection; if you do not bear witness to your belief in the Unity of that family, consequent upon the Unity of God, and in that fraternity among the peoples which is destined to reduce that Unity to action; if, wheresoever a fellow-creature suffers, or the dignity of human nature is violated by falsehood or tyranny—you are not ready, if able, to aid the unhappy, and do not feel called upon to combat, if able, for the redemption of the betrayed and oppressed—you violate your law of life, you comprehend not that Religion which will be the guide and blessing of the future.
But what can each of you, singly, do for the moral improvement and progress of Humanity? You can from time to time give sterile utterance to your belief; you may, on some rare occasions, perform some act of charity towards a brother-man not belonging to your own land—no more. But charity is not the watchword of the Faith of the Future. The watchword of the faith of the future is Association and fraternal cooperation towards a common aim; and this is far superior to all charity, as the edifice which all of you should unite to raise would be superior to the humble hut each one of you might build alone, or with the mere assistance of lending and borrowing stone, mortar, and tools.
But, you tell me, you cannot attempt united action, distinct and divided as you are in language, customs, tendencies, and capacity. The individual is too insignificant, and Humanity too vast. The mariner of Brittany prays to God as he puts to sea; “Help me, my God! my boat is so small and Thy ocean so wide!” And this prayer is the true expression of the condition of each one of you, until you find the means of infinitely multiplying your forces and powers of action.
This means was provided for you by God when He gave you a country; when, even as a wise overseer of labour distributes the various branches of employment according to the different capacities of the workmen, he divided Humanity into distinct groups or nuclei upon the face of the earth, thus creating the germ of nationalities. Evil governments have disfigured the Divine design. Nevertheless you may still trace it, distinctly marked out—at least as far as Europe is concerned—by the course of the great rivers, the direction of the higher mountains, and other geographical conditions. They have disfigured it by their conquests, their greed, and their jealousy even of the righteous power of others; disfigured it so far that, if we except England and France, there is not perhaps a single country whose present boundaries correspond to that design.
These governments did not, and do not, recognize any country save their own families or dynasty, the egoism of caste. But the Divine design will infallibly be realized; natural divisions and the spontaneous, innate tendencies of the peoples will take the place of the arbitrary divisions, sanctioned by evil governments. The map of Europe will be redrawn. The countries of the peoples, defined by the vote of free men, will arise upon the ruins of the countries of kings and privileged castes, and between these countries harmony and fraternity will exist. And the common work of Humanity, of general amelioration, and the gradual discovery and application of its Law of life, being distributed according to local and general capacities, will be wrought out in peaceful and progressive development and advance. Then may each one of you, fortified by the power and affection of many millions, all speaking the same language, gifted with the same tendencies, and educated by the same historical tradition, hope even by your own single efforts to be able to benefit all Humanity.
O, my brothers, love your Country! Our country is our Home, a house God has given us, placing therein a numerous family that loves us, and whom we love; a family with whom we sympathize more readily and whom we understand more quickly than we do others; and which, from its being centered around a given spot, and from the homogeneous nature of its elements, is adapted to a special branch of activity. Our Country is our common workshop, whence the products of our activity are sent forth for the benefit of the whole world; wherein the tools and implements of labor we can most usefully employ are gathered together; nor may we reject them without disobeying the plan of the Almighty, and diminishing our own strength.
In laboring for our own country on the right principle, we labor for Humanity. Our country is the fulcrum of the lever we have to wield for the common good. If we abandon the fulcrum, we run the risk of rendering ourselves useless not only to Humanity but to our country itself. Before men can associate with the nations of which Humanity is composed, they must have a national existence. There is no true association except among equals. It is only through our country that we can have a recognized collective existence. Humanity is a vast army advancing to the conquest of lands unknown, against enemies both powerful and astute. The peoples are the different corps, the divisions of that army. Each of them has its post assigned to it, and its special operation to execute; and the common victory depends upon the exactitude with which those distinct operations are fulfilled. Disturb not the order of battle. Forsake not the banner given to you by God. Wheresoever you may be, in the center of whatsoever people circumstances may have placed you, be ever ready to combat for the liberty of that people, should it be necessary, but combat in such wise that the blood you shed may reflect glory, not on yourself alone, but on your country. Say not I, but We. Let each man among you strive to incarnate his country in himself. Let each man among you regard himself as a guarantor, responsible for his fellow-countrymen, and learn so to govern his actions as to cause his country to be loved and respected through him. Your country is the sign of the Mission God has given you to fulfill towards Humanity. The faculties and forces of all her sons should be associated in the accomplishment of that mission. The true country is a community of free men and equals, bound together in fraternal concord to labor towards a common aim. You are bound to make it and to maintain it such. The country is not an aggregation, but an association. There is, therefore, no true country without a uniform right. There is no true country where the uniformity of that right is violated by the existence of caste privilege and inequality. Where the activity of a portion of the powers and faculties of the individual is either cancelled or dormant; where there is not a common Principle, recognized, accepted, and developed by all, there is no true Nation, no People; but only a multitude, a fortuitous agglomeration of men whom circumstances have called together and whom circumstances may again divide. In the name of the love you bear your country, you must peacefully but untiringly combat the existence of privilege and inequality in the land that gave you life.
There is but one sole legitimate privilege, the privilege of Genius when it reveals itself united with virtue. But this is a privilege given by God, and when you acknowledge it, and follow its inspiration, you do so freely, exercising your own reason and your own choice. Every privilege which demands submission from you in virtue of power, inheritance, or any other right than the Right common to all, is a usurpation and a tyranny which you are bound to resist and destroy.
Be your country your Temple: God at the summit; a people of equals at the base.
Accept no other formula, no other moral law, if you would not dishonor alike your country and yourselves. Let all secondary laws be but the gradual regulation of your existence by the progressive application of this Supreme law. And in order that they may be such, it is necessary that all of you should aid in framing them. Laws framed only by a single fraction of the citizens, can never, in the very nature of things, be other than the mere expression of the thoughts, aspirations, and desires of that fraction; the representation, not of the country, but of a third or fourth part, of a class or zone of the country.
The laws should be the expression of the universal aspiration, and promote the universal good. They should be a pulsation of the heart of the nation. The entire nation should, either directly or indirectly, legislate.
By yielding up this mission into the hands of a few, you substitute the selfishness of one class for the Country, which is the union of all classes.
Country is not only a mere zone of territory. The true Country is the Idea to which it gives birth; it is the Thought of love, the sense of communion which unites in one all the sons of that territory.
So long as a single one amongst your brothers has no vote to represent him in the development of the national life, so long as there is one left to vegetate in ignorance where others are educated, so long as a single man, able and willing to work, languishes in poverty through want of work to do, you have no country in the sense in which Country ought to exist—the country of all and for all.
Education, labor, and the franchise, are the three main pillars of the Nation; rest not until you have built them thoroughly up with your own labor and exertions.
Be it yours to evolve the life of your country in loveliness and strength; free from all servile fears or skeptical doubts; maintaining as its basis the People; as its guide the principles of its Religious Faith, logically and energetically applied; its strength, the united strength of all; its aim, the fulfillment of the mission given to it by God.
And so long as you are ready to die for Humanity, the life of your country will be immortal.
Source: Hanover Historical Texts Project, http://
Nikolai Iakovlevich Danilevskii (1822–85) was a Russian naturalist, economist, ethnologist, philosopher, and historian. He was the most important theorist of pan-Slavism—that is, the idea that all the world’s Slavs should be united under Russian leadership. His ideas were deeply influential among the educated Russian middle class.
Both Turkey and Austria have lost all meaning. Never having an internal basis or reason to exist, they have now lost the temporary and accidental significance justifying their political existence. In other words they have died, and like any carcass, they are dangerously unhygienic, producing their own kind of illness and contagion. Almost everyone agrees that Turkey has died, but a clear view of things shows that Austria is just as dead, and neither centralization nor dualism, neither simply Austrian nor Austrian-Turkish federalism will revive it. With the disappearance of the historical idea that grouped these people-elements into a political body, these elements will become free and can only be brought together again by the action of a new living principle which, according to the predominant, supreme significance of nationality in any type of political combinations (from the integral, condensed state to the entire political system) can be none other than the ethnographic principle. In the present case, this principle can only be the idea of Slavdom: not any particular idea of an Austrian, Turkish, or Austro-Turkish kind of Slavdom, but the idea of All-Slavdom.…
… By ethnographic conditions, the Slavs must form a federation, but this federation must encompass all lands and peoples from the Adriatic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, from the Arctic Sea to the Archipelago [i.e., the Aegean Sea]. In compliance with these conditions, and also in accordance with the facts of history and with the political situation right next to the powerful, hostile Germanic-Roman world, this federation would have to be as closely-knit as possible, under the leadership and hegemony of a whole, united Russian state. Such an All-Slavic federation fully meeting the requirements of the ethnographic principle, like any complete answer to the question, simultaneously abolishes all other incompatibilities and hindrances that arise in our minds at every turn for the Austrian or Austro-Turkish federations.
And into this All-Slavic federation must enter, willingly or unwillingly, all those non-Slavic nationalities (Greeks, Romanians, and Magyars) crammed into the Slavic body, whose historical fate has been inseparably connected, for better or for worse, with ours. But this foreign ethnographic admixture losing itself, so to speak, in the mass of the Slavs, cannot have the same harmful, disintegrative influence for an All-Slavic union that it has had for individual Slavic unions. Not only that, but the main non-Slavic members of the Slavic federation—the Greeks and Romanians—cannot even be considered a foreign admixture within it, because whatever they lack in similarity of the blood is made up for by their similarity of spirit: though not Slavs, they are Orthodox. But even that is not all. These peoples are not so foreign to Slavs, even by blood, as some think and as many would like. They are saturated, so to speak, with Slavic elements, and as a link in the system of Slavic peoples are analogous to the Romanic peoples within the European system who, like the French, are saturated with Germanic elements. What is strictly non-Slavic in them is only the vain pretense of isolation, exaggerated within their intelligentsia by the temptations, instigations, and incitements of our Western ill-wishers.… Concerning the Magyars, the saying applies: “Take the smooth with the rough.” Having encroached on Slavic lands, and having acquired the completely unjustified sovereignty over them that they have enjoyed over the course of several centuries, they must share the fate of all great tribes and exchange primacy and a ruling position for secondary, subject status.…
And so, an All-Slavic federation is the only reasonable, and thus the only resolution of the Eastern Question.21 But before we can examine it in detail and answer all objections that could be made against it, and have been made by both friends and enemies, we must turn all our attention to one of the most essential elements of this question which we have not yet touched upon, but which can be justly considered its Gordian knot. It would be preferable not to cut this knot, but untie it: that is, to resolve it correctly (or in other words, in compliance with the inherent, essential requirements of the matter). I have in mind the question of Constantinople.
… Neither the great Western powers, nor Greece, would derive any benefit from the possession of Constantinople, and not only that, but it would even be such a heavy burden that it would be hard for the first to bear, and would inevitably crush the second.
For Russia the possession of Constantinople appears in a completely different light. The advantages it would gain from it are truly priceless and innumerable.
1) Recent bitter experience22 has shown where is the Achilles’ heel of Russia, which its enemies have long sought. In contrast, the most decisive experience of many centuries, undertaken with huge means and under the leadership of the most skillful operators, had shown very clearly that from the other sides, the west and the north, it is invulnerable. The vulnerability from the east has already passed; thus all that remains is vulnerability to the south. These are not just empirical data, but facts supporting the most satisfactory explanation, since they result from the situation of Russia, the essential characteristics and particular nature of its power and strength.
Any attack from the west would be repulsed by the land forces of Russia, which always have, and always will constitute the main source of its power. Vast, impassable swamps and forests divide the expanse along the western border of Russia into two completely separate theaters of military action. A simultaneous attack on them both is possible only in the highly unlikely event of an alliance between both our western neighbors, Prussia and Austria. Thus, in most cases Russia can be completely at peace either in the region to the south, or to the north of the woodlands and swamp system of the Pripiat River. Our weak point on that side, of course, is Poland; but our political relations with it are such that in any war with Poland, the mightiest of our neighbors, Prussia, could never be among our enemies, at least not for long. But Russia’s strength consists not only in its army but in the soul of its whole people, which has always been ready to see its homes and property in the embrace of flames rather than enemy hands. And any enemy invading Russian territory would have to contend with this people.
From the Baltic Sea can only come diversions, incidental attacks at one or another point; but it cannot serve as the basis for a proper, systematically organized action, for the simple reason that any success made in summer must be left off in wintertime.
From the south, on the contrary, Russia is open to the attacks of powers with great naval means. A land defense of the coasts requires vast forces, though actually even that is not enough. To have any kind of success, enemies would have to hold it and turn it into a new point of support for further ventures. Of course, an invasion into the interior of Russia even from this side would be difficult, even impossible if you will but there would be no need for such an invasion. Possession of the sea coasts,—or even of the Crimea alone, would be enough to bring real harm to Russia and paralyze it. The possession of Constantinople and the straits would eliminate this danger and make the southern border of Russia the most safe and impregnable.
2) We have fallen into the unfortunate habit of saying that Russia is big enough, or even too big; that it needs no more conquests; that new acquisitions would be a burden to it, and already are a burden to it. Of course there are different kinds of acquisitions, but concerning general complaints about the too-vast expanse of Russia I see no grounds for complaint. England after all is bigger than Russia,23 and it is not burdened by its far-flung possessions scattered all over the face of the earth. And concepts of size and greatness are all relative, and it seems to me a correct determination can only be made by the relationship between the size attained and the expansive force within what is growing. A big fat oak fifteen sazhens24 high must not be called too big when it has only assumed its normal dimensions. Likewise a state cannot be considered to have reached full size, no matter how many square miles or versts25 it is, when nearly four million of the ruling people’s fellow tribesmen live outside of it. It has only reached full size when the entire people that formed it, supports it, and brings it life has united together, and when it has become the undisputed lord of the lands settled by this people; that is, it controls the access into and out of it, the mouths of the rivers that water almost its full extent, and the mouths of its inland seas. Put simply, when it has accomplished its historical purpose. Speaking of the expanse of Russia, we should not forget that, soil-wise and climate-wise, it is situated in less than ideal conditions than all the great states of Europe, Asia, and America, and thus it requires a greater expanse than they do to gather the makings of its wealth and might.
Of course the great expanse has its own disadvantages, and without a doubt the main one is the great extent of its borders. But the acquisition of Constantinople would give Russia a completely different advantage which, instead of increasing its disadvantages, would decrease them to a significant degree, condensing, so to speak, twenty-five hundred [versts] of borderlines all along the Black and Azov Seas into a single point. Therefore, if Constantinople in the hands of England or France would require a sizable army and navy to defend this point, over and above what they would need without it, in the hands of Russia it would allow a reduction of its armed forces and attending expenditures by at least the same amount.…
So from whatever side we approach the matter, an All-Slavic federation with Russia at the head and its capital at Tsargrad is the only reasonable, intelligent solution to the great historical puzzle passed down from ancient times, known as the Eastern Question.…
Being face to face with a West that is hostile to them is the reason that would make the Slavs wish for very close federative bonds beneath the political hegemony and leadership of Russia, which has the most legal right to it, based on its comparative strength over all the other members of the Slavic family, and based on its having maintained political independence over the course of many centuries. Despite the places where Russia swerved from the path of healthy politics, especially in the last half of the era of Catherine, still it and only it among all the Slavic states could not only preserve its independence under the most unfavorable circumstances but even unite nearly all of the Russian people and form the mightiest state in the world.
But for the political strength of the All-Slavic union, it is not enough to grant Russia undisputed hegemonic dominion over it; the secondary groups or members of the union must also provide sufficient guarantee of the power and unity of its inner structure. The divisiveness to which the Austrian Slavs are particularly inclined, from having long lived under the ruling principle of Divide et impera,26 must spill over the borders of the largest linguistic and ethnographic groups into which they are divided. Dividing by minor tribal identities, each easily tempted by pretensions to political independence, would have the essential problem that each of these minor entities would have too little incentive to devote all their strength to the burdens that come with such a great political role.…
Thus, corresponding to the main ethnographic groups into which the Slavic world divides, as well as the tribes included by place of residence, but also mostly according to actual, genuine moral inclinations—the All-Slavic union must consist of the following states:
The Russian Empire with Galicia and Ugric Rus27 annexed to it.
A Czecho-Moravian-Slovakian kingdom consisting, besides Czechia,28 of Moravia and the northwest part of Hungary settled exclusively or predominantly by Slovaks; approximately nine million in population and 1,800 square miles of territory.
A Serbo-Croat-Slovene kingdom consisting of the Serbian Principality, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Old Serbia, northern Albania, the Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar, Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, the Military Frontier [of Austria], the Duchy of Carniola, Goritzia and Gradisca, Istria, the Trieste region, two-thirds of Carinthia, and one-fifth of Styria on the Drava; approximately eight million in population and 4,500 square miles of territory.
A Bulgarian kingdom with Bulgaria and most of Rumelia and Macedonia; approximately 6–7 million in population and more than 3,000 square miles.
A Romanian kingdom with Wallachia, Moldavia, part of Bukovina, approximately half of Transylvania along the Maros River, the western borders of Bessarabia populated predominantly by Moldavians, in exchange for which Russia must receive from it part of southern Bessarabia from the Danube delta and Dobruja. This would consist of nearly seven million in population and more than 3,000 square miles.
A Hellenic kingdom including present-day Thessaly, Epirus, the southwestern part of Macedonia, all the islands of the Archipelago [Aegean Islands], Rhodes, Crete, Cyprus, and the Aegean coast of Asia Minor; with over four million in population and 2,800 to 3,000 square miles.
A Magyar kingdom, that is, Hungary and Transylvania beyond those parts not settled by Magyar tribes, which must go to Russia, Czechia, Serbia, and Romania; approximately seven million in population and 3,000 square miles.
The Tsargrad district with the parts of Romania and Asia Minor surrounding the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles, with the peninsula of Gallipoli and the island of Tenedos; with a population of approximately two million.
A union like this—of peoples mostly related by spirit and blood, a fresh one hundred twenty-five million in population, with Tsargrad at the natural center of its moral and material unity—would give the only full, reasonable, and thus the only possible, solution to the Eastern Question. Owning only what belongs to it by right, not threatening anyone and not fearing any threat, it could withstand all storms and adversity while calmly proceeding down the path of independent development, in the fullness of its peoples’ strength, and in the most harmonious coordination of the kindred elements comprising it. Corresponding to its ethnographic makeup, religious illumination, and historical background, it would form a unique cultural-historical type, strengthened by a long struggle against the hostile outside forces now separating its peoples, a struggle without which it cannot be formed.…
… Not belonging in essence to Europe, Russia by its own standards is an anomaly in the Germanic-Roman world of Europe, and the natural increase in the size of its population must reinforce its position as an anomaly. By its very existence Russia throws off the whole system of European equilibrium. Not one state would dare to make war against Russia one-on-one. The Eastern War29 showed this best of all, when four states, with the help of Austria (more than half of which took a hostile attitude toward Russia), with the most disadvantageous conditions for us and the most advantageous for them, still took a whole year to besiege a single coastal fortress [i.e., Sevastopol, in the Crimean War], without any kind of Frederick, Suvorov,30 or Napoleon on the Russian side, but only the immense capabilities of Russia and the unconquerable spirit of its defenders.
We must not fail to realize that Russia is too big and powerful to be only one of the great European powers, and if it could play that role for these last seventy years, it was only by contorting or crimping its own natural aspirations, not giving them free rein, and deviating from its own destiny. This self-denigration must grow progressively in proportion to its natural development of strength, since by the very essence of the matter, the expansive force of Russia is much greater than that of the states of Europe, and its disproportion with the demands of the policy of equilibrium will necessarily become more and more painfully obvious. In saying so, I am of course looking at the matter from a general point of view, but not in application to any particular case, when due to the confluence of various circumstances a weaker opponent can rule over one much stronger. Any investigations of this sort certainly presuppose the caveat expressed in the oft-used formula, “All other conditions being equal.”
However, considering the proximity of Europe, considering the boundary line shared with Europe across thousands of versts, the complete separation of Russia from Europe is inconceivable. That kind of separation could not protect China and Japan,31 separated from Europe by the earth’s diameter. Russia must have some kind of direct relations with it. If it cannot and must not be in an intimate, kindred connection with Europe as a member of the European family (which the evidence of long experience proves will not accept it, but will only demand an impossible rejection of its most obvious rights, healthy interests, natural sympathies, and holy obligations); and if, on the other hand, it does not want to be in a position of submission to Europe (reconfiguring its desires accordingly and fulfilling all Europe’s humiliating demands), then there is nothing left for it to do but assume its actual role, designated by ethnographic and historical conditions, and serve as a counterweight not to one or another European state, but to Europe in general, in its totality.
But however great and powerful Russia is, it is still too weak to do this. It needs to weaken the enemy, separate those who are its enemies against their will, and turn them to its side as friends. Russia’s lot is a happy one: To increase its power, it does not need to conquer or oppress, like all the other powers on earth up to now (Macedonia, Rome, the Arabs, the Mongols, and states of the Germanic-Roman world), but to liberate and restore. And in this marvelous near-coincidence of moral conviction and obligation with political advantage and necessity, we must not fail to see the guarantee of the fulfillment of its great destiny, assuming our world is not a pitiful, accidental mess but a reflection of the highest reason, truth, and kindness.
We should not deceive ourselves. Europe’s hostility is too obvious: it lies not in the accidental combinations of European policies, not in the ambitions of one or another statesman, but in its most fundamental interests. Its internal accounts are far from settled. The seeds of internal struggle have begun to germinate in recent times, but these are most likely among the last. Once they are settled, or pacified for an extended length of time, Europe will again direct all its forces and designs against Russia, which it considers its natural-born enemy. If Russia does not understand its significance, it will inevitably suffer the fate of everything outdated, superfluous, and unnecessary. With its historical role gradually diminishing, Russia will have to bow its head to the demands of Europe, which will not grant it any influence in the East, and will erect (in one form or another, depending on circumstances) strongholds against its connections with its western Slavic relatives. Not only this, but, on the one hand, with the help of its accomplices among the Turks, Germans, Magyars, Italians, Poles, Greeks, and maybe even Romanians (who are always ready to break away from disunited Slavdom), and on the other hand, by its political and civilizational temptations, Europe will so remove the very soul of Slavdom that it breaks out in the bloom of Europeanism, with Europe itself fertilizing the soil. But for Russia—having not fulfilled its calling and thus having lost the reason for its existence, its vital essence, its idea—there will be nothing left but ingloriously to live out its pitiful life, to rot through like historical rubbish lacking all sense and significance, or to turn into a lifeless mass, an inanimate body, so to speak; and also, in the best case, to dissolve into ethnographic material for new, unknown historical formations, leaving no living trace of itself.
Being foreign to the European world by its inherent constitution, and besides that, being too strong and powerful to be merely one member of the European family or just another of the great European powers, Russia can only take a place in history worthy of itself and Slavdom by being the head of its own independent political system of states, and serving as a counterbalance to Europe in general and as a whole. This is the advantage, the benefit, and the whole idea of the All-Slavic union in regard to Russia.…
The other bogeyman that scares people away from the idea of All-Slavdom is the danger of global monarchy, the fear of world domination. As was made clear in the explanation just given, even if such world domination were a natural and necessary consequence of the All-Slavic union, then in any case it would be not especially Russian, but All-Slavic, domination—and to the Slavs, it would seem, there is nothing to fear. The ancient Romans were not afraid of the idea of global domination; England has no fear of the idea of global domination of the seas, and the expansion of its possessions, girdling the seas and oceans with a chain of large and small British colonies; even America is not afraid of the idea of unchallenged dominion from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego. What strange kind of modesty is this: to back away from a great future and avoid it for fear of becoming too powerful and strong …?
But that is not the point. This fear itself has no basis at all. A great Slavic union guaranteeing the freedom of the Slavs and their fruitful interaction with each other could not threaten anyone’s independence or anyone’s legal rights. Once again, a simple statistical calculation will confirm this. The population of only those parts of Europe that at the present time play an active political role—that is, Germany (after the apportionment of all the non-German parts of Austria), France, and England, with the addition of Belgium and Holland, which willingly or not always end up following them—would equal the population of the whole Slavic union. Including Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the Scandinavian states would create an excess on the European side of at least fifty million people. Thus from the outset the Slavic system of states would still be significantly weaker than the European system of states by the amount of its population, and could only be considered insuperable in terms of the defense and protection of Slavic independence and autonomy. The balance of power would be equalized somewhat by the above-cited strategic locations of Constantinople and the Czech bastion.
But considering the abundant love of humanity in the Slavic heart, which considers it a most sacred obligation to sacrifice its own Slavic goals and interests to some unknown set of all-human goals (which, due to the most absurd habit of confusing this “all-human” with “Western” and “European,” goes only to the benefit of the European, which is always hostile to the Slavic), we must not limit ourselves to the preceding evidence. We need to show that not only the independence, but the political power of the Slavs is vitally necessary for the lawful and harmonious course of intra-human interactions; that the political power of Slavdom not only cannot threaten the enslavement of the whole world or world domination, but only this can put up an adequate barrier against the world domination that more and more is being acquired (and to a significant degree, already has been) by Europe.…
… With the unification of all the major European nationalities, and thus the near-complete elimination of the pretexts and temptations to destroy the political system of equilibrium, all the former hindrances to the spread of European dominion over other parts of the world have now fallen.
Having been a force from the very beginning of European history; strengthened by its religious fanaticism and militancy, Islam collapsed, along with the spirit of its followers. The immensity, massiveness, and/or remoteness of such political bodies as China and Japan in eastern Asia lost their defensive significance once steam power was applied to military purposes, since now it became possible to transport to the opposite hemisphere a mass of troops strong enough for a rapid and energetic suppression of any uprising that might occur, and even to take these troops deep within the country by means of rivers. Finally the truest obstacle to Europe’s world domination—the internal struggles of European states to establish proper relations among themselves—has also been eliminated by the near-complete attainment of stable equilibrium. All the ambitious activity of Europe (of which there has been no lack) is to an increasing degree directed toward what is not Europe, as was always the case during a truce in its internal struggle. The Drang nach Osten32 is not long in turning from word into deed.
Fortunately, just as the old obstacles to Europe’s world domination had fallen, there arose two new ones, and only they had the ability to stop it in its path, and lay the foundation of true global equilibrium. These two obstacles are the United States of America and Russia. But the first is insulated from the interference of Europe by the barriers of the New World, and because of its position is comparatively less interested in how to handle the Old World, and also cannot in and of itself have a great influence on this theater of activity. Thus the full burden of preserving the balance of powers in the Old World rests on the shoulders of Russia. But if the American states are strong enough to fulfill the task laid upon them, due to their overseas location, the same cannot be said of Russia.
The irreconcilable hostility of Europe toward Russia is proven by long experience, and from that we have every reason to believe that as soon as Europe puts the last of its affairs in order, when the new elements of its system’s political equilibrium have time to settle down and get firmly established, then just as it was in the Eastern War, the first excuse will be enough for an attack on Russia. And excuses of this kind are always readily provided by the East and Poland.
But only a united Slavdom can contend with a united Europe. And so, an All-Slavic union does not threaten world domination, but on the contrary offers the necessary and at the same time only possible guarantee of preserving global equilibrium, as the only bulwark against the world domination of Europe. This union would be no threat to anyone, but a purely defensive measure not only in the particular interests of Slavdom, but for the whole world. The result of an All-Slavic union would not be world domination, but an equal and proper division of power and influence among the peoples or groups of peoples that should be considered the active agents in the present era of world history—Europe, Slavdom, and America—which are each at different stages of development.…
Sooner or later, like it or not, a struggle with Europe (or at least a significant part of it) is inevitable, over the Eastern Question: that is, over the freedom and independence of Slavdom, over the possession of Tsargrad—over everything that Europe considers a matter of Russia’s unruly ambition, but which every Russian worthy of the name considers a necessary requirement of its historical calling. The dreadful outbreak of the struggle may be delayed, postponed for one or another reason by us or by the Europeans, but it can only be prevented by Europe feeling the full justice of Slavic demands and voluntarily ceding them (of which there is little hope, as all can see); or by Russia actually showing itself to be, as its enemies say, “an ailing, failing colossus,” weakened morally, ceasing to heed not only the voice of national honor but also the loudest summons of the instinct for self-preservation; ready to renounce all traditions of its history and disavow the very idea of its existence. But that is not all. Even if Russia went to such a level of self-abasement, it would be too unbelievable: they would see this as deception and a ruse, and would still not leave us in peace.
We consider the very process of this inevitable struggle, and not just certain of its desired outcomes (as we have repeatedly explained), salutary and beneficial, since only this struggle can sober our thoughts and raise in all levels of society the national spirit, which is sinking into imitativeness and worship of the foreign, infected by the extremely dangerous illness we call Europeanism. Perhaps we will be accused of preaching enmity or extolling war. Such an accusation would be incorrect. We are not preaching war, if for no other reason than the fact that such a message would be only too funny from a voice as weak as ours. Yet we are affirming, and even proving, that a struggle is inevitable, and suggesting that even though war is a very great evil, there is still a greater one, something much worse than war, against which war can serve as medicine, since “man does not live by bread alone.”33 […]
Source: Nikolai Iakovlevich Danilevskii, Russia and Europe: The Slavic World’s Political and Cultural Relations with the Germanic-Roman West: The Slavic World’s Political and Cultural Relations with the Germanic-Roman West, translated by Stephen M. Woodburn (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2013), 313–15, 324–26, 332–33, 335–36, 344–46, 354–55, 364–65, 373–74.
English journalist Norman Angell was Paris editor for the London Daily Mail from 1905 to 1912. In his most famous work, The Great Illusion, he argued that the economies of the European powers had become so closely intertwined that any war among them would be futile (although, contrary to some commenters, he never claimed that war had become impossible). He laid out his case in his introductory synopsis, which he wrote in the third person.
What are the fundamental motives that explain the present rivalry of armaments in Europe, notably the Anglo-German? Each nation pleads the need for defence; but this implies that someone is likely to attack, and has therefore a presumed interest in so doing. What are the motives which each State thus fears its neighbors may obey?
They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force against others (German naval competition is assumed to be the expression of the growing need of an expanding population for a larger place in the world, a need which will find a realization in the conquest of English Colonies or trade, unless these are defended); it is assumed, therefore, that a nation’s relative prosperity is broadly determined by its political power; that nations being competing units, advantage, in the last resort, goes to the possessor of preponderant military force, the weaker going to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for life.
The author challenges this whole doctrine. He attempts to show that it belongs to a stage of development out of which we have passed; that the commerce and industry of a people no longer depend upon the expansion of its political frontiers; that a nation’s political and economic frontiers do not now necessarily coincide; that military power is socially and economically futile, and can have no relation to the prosperity of the people exercising it; that it is impossible for one nation to seize by force the wealth or trade of another—to enrich itself by subjugating, or imposing its will by force on another; that, in short, war, even when victorious, can no longer achieve those aims for which peoples strive.
He establishes this apparent paradox, in so far as the economic problem is concerned, by showing that wealth in the economically civilized world is founded upon credit and commercial contract (these being the outgrowth of an economic interdependence due to the increasing division of labor and greatly developed communication). If credit and commercial contract are tampered with in an attempt at confiscation, the credit-dependent wealth is undermined, and its collapse involves that of the conqueror; so that if conquest is not to be self-injurious it must respect the enemy’s property, in which case it becomes economically futile. Thus the wealth of conquered territory remains in the hands of the population of such territory. When Germany annexed Alsatia [Alsace-Lorraine], no individual German secured a single mark’s worth of Alsatian property as the spoils of war. Conquest in the modern world is a process of multiplying by x, and then obtaining the original figure by dividing by x. For a modern nation to add to its territory no more adds to the wealth of the people of such nation than it would add to the wealth of Londoners if the City of London were to annex the county of Hertford.
The author also shows that international finance has become so interdependent and so interwoven with trade and industry that the intangibility of an enemy’s property extends to his trade. It results that political and military power can in reality do nothing for trade; the individual merchants and manufacturers of small nations, exercising no such power, compete successfully with those of the great. Swiss and Belgian merchants drive English from the British Colonial market; Norway has, relatively to population, a greater mercantile marine than Great Britain; the public credit (as a rough-and-ready indication, among others, of security and wealth) of small States possessing no political power often stands higher than that of the Great Powers of Europe.…
The forces which have brought about the economic futility of military power have also rendered it futile as a means of enforcing a nation’s moral ideals or imposing social institutions upon a conquered people. Germany could not turn Canada or Australia into German colonies—i.e., stamp out their language, law, literature, traditions, etc.—by “capturing” them. The necessary security in their material possessions enjoyed by the inhabitants of such conquered provinces, quick inter-communication by a cheap press, widely-read literature, enable even small communities to become articulate and effectively to defend their special social or moral possessions, even when military conquest has been complete. The fight for ideals can no longer take the form of fight between nations, because the lines of division on moral questions are within the nations themselves and intersect the political frontiers. There is no modern State which is completely Catholic or Protestant, or liberal or autocratic, or aristocratic or democratic, or socialist or individualist; the moral and spiritual struggles of the modern world go on between citizens of the same State in unconscious intellectual co-operation with corresponding groups in other States, not between the public powers of rival States.
This classification by strata involves necessarily a redirection of human pugnacity, based rather on the rivalry of classes and interests than on State divisions. War has no longer the justification that it makes for the survival of the fittest; it involves the survival of the less fit. The idea that the struggle between nations is a part of the evolutionary law of man’s advance involves a profound misreading of the biological analogy.
The warlike nations do not inherit the earth; they represent the decaying human element. The diminishing rôle of physical force in all spheres of human activity carries with it profound psychological modifications.
These tendencies, mainly the outcome of purely modern conditions (e.g. rapidity of communication), have rendered the problems of modern international politics profoundly and essentially different from the ancient; yet our ideas are still dominated by the principles and axioms, images and terminology of the bygone days.
The author urges that these little-recognized facts may be utilized for the solution of the armament difficulty on at present untried lines—by such modification of opinion in Europe that much of the present motive to aggression will cease to be operative, and by thus diminishing the risk of attack, diminishing to the same extent the need for defence. He shows how such a political reformation is within the scope of practical politics, and the methods which should be employed to bring it about.
Source: Norman Angell, The Great Illusion (London and New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1910), 9–13.
Friedrich von Bernhardi was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1849, but in 1851 he moved with his family to the German province of Silesia. He served with distinction in the Franco-Prussian War, and in the victory parade through Paris that followed he was given the honor of being the first German soldier to ride through the Arc de Triomphe. He held a variety of posts in the years that followed, including head of the military history department of the General Staff. In 1909, however, he retired from active service in order to focus on writing. In this, his most famous work, he made the controversial claim that war, far from being something to be avoided, was “a biological necessity.”
Note that in this introduction Bernhardi focuses on the question of war in general. In the excerpts included in the “Supplemental Documents” section, he offers specific recommendations for German foreign and military policy.
Since 1795, when Immanuel Kant published in his old age his treatise on “Perpetual Peace,” many have considered it an established fact that war is the destruction of all good and the origin of all evil. In spite of all that history teaches, no conviction is felt that the struggle between nations is inevitable, and the growth of civilization is credited with a power to which war must yield. But, undisturbed by such human theories and the change of times, war has again and again marched from country to country with the clash of arms, and has proved its destructive as well as creative and purifying power. It has not succeeded in teaching mankind what its real nature is. Long periods of war, far from convincing men of the necessity of war, have, on the contrary, always revived the wish to exclude war, where possible, from the political intercourse of nations.
This wish and this hope are widely disseminated even to-day. The maintenance of peace is lauded as the only goal at which statesmanship should aim. This unqualified desire for peace has obtained in our days a quite peculiar power over men’s spirits. This aspiration finds its public expression in peace leagues and peace congresses; the Press of every country and of every party opens its columns to it. The current in this direction is, indeed, so strong that the majority of Governments profess—outwardly, at any rate—that the necessity of maintaining peace is the real aim of their policy; while when a war breaks out the aggressor is universally stigmatized, and all Governments exert themselves, partly in reality, partly in pretence, to extinguish the conflagration.…
This aspiration is directly antagonistic to the great universal laws which rule all life. War is a biological necessity of the first importance, a regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed with, since without it an unhealthy development will follow, which excludes every advancement of the race, and therefore all real civilization. “War is the father of all things.”34 The sages of antiquity long before Darwin recognized this.
The struggle for existence is, in the life of Nature, the basis of all healthy development. All existing things show themselves to be the result of contesting forces. So in the life of man the struggle is not merely the destructive, but the life-giving principle. “To supplant or to be supplanted is the essence of life,” says Goethe, and the strong life gains the upper hand. The law of the stronger holds good everywhere. Those forms survive which are able to procure themselves the most favourable conditions of life, and to assert themselves in the universal economy of Nature. The weaker succumb. This struggle is regulated and restrained by the unconscious sway of biological laws and by the interplay of opposite forces. In the plant world and the animal world this process is worked out in unconscious tragedy. In the human race it is consciously carried out, and regulated by social ordinances. The man of strong will and strong intellect tries by every means to assert himself, the ambitious strive to rise, and in this effort the individual is far from being guided merely by the consciousness of right. The life-work and the life-struggle of many men are determined, doubtless, by unselfish and ideal motives, but to a far greater extent the less noble passions—craving for possessions, enjoyment and honour, envy and the thirst for revenge—determine men’s actions. Still more often, perhaps, it is the need to live which brings down even natures of a higher mould into the universal struggle for existence and enjoyment.…
Now, it is, of course, an obvious fact that a peaceful rivalry may exist between peoples and States, like that between the fellow-members of a society, in all departments of civilized life—a struggle which need not always degenerate into war. Struggle and war are not identical. This rivalry, however, does not take place under the same conditions as the intrasocial struggle, and therefore cannot lead to the same results. Above the rivalry of individuals and groups within the State stands the law, which takes care that injustice is kept within bounds, and that the right shall prevail. Behind the law stands the State, armed with power, which it employs, and rightly so, not merely to protect, but actively to promote, the moral and spiritual interests of society. But there is no impartial power that stands above the rivalry of States to restrain injustice, and to use that rivalry with conscious purpose to promote the highest ends of mankind. Between States the only check on injustice is force, and in morality and civilization each people must play its own part and promote its own ends and ideals. If in doing so it comes into conflict with the ideals and views of other States, it must either submit and concede the precedence to the rival people or State, or appeal to force, and face the risk of the real struggle—i.e., of war—in order to make its own views prevail. No power exists which can judge between States, and makes its judgments prevail. Nothing, in fact, is left but war to secure to the true elements of progress the ascendancy over the spirits of corruption and decay.
It will, of course, happen that several weak nations unite and form a superior combination in order to defeat a nation which in itself is stronger. This attempt will succeed for a time, but in the end the more intensive vitality will prevail. The allied opponents have the seeds of corruption in them, while the powerful nation gains from a temporary reverse a new strength which procures for it an ultimate victory over numerical superiority. The history of Germany is an eloquent example of this truth.
Struggle is, therefore, a universal law of Nature, and the instinct of self-preservation which leads to struggle is acknowledged to be a natural condition of existence. “Man is a fighter.” Self-sacrifice is a renunciation of life, whether in the existence of the individual or in the life of States, which are agglomerations of individuals. The first and paramount law is the assertion of one’s own independent existence. By self-assertion alone can the State maintain the conditions of life for its citizens, and insure them the legal protection which each man is entitled to claim from it. This duty of self-assertion is by no means satisfied by the mere repulse of hostile attacks; it includes the obligation to assure the possibility of life and development to the whole body of the nation embraced by the State.
Strong, healthy, and flourishing nations increase in numbers. From a given moment they require a continual expansion of their frontiers, they require new territory for the accommodation of their surplus population. Since almost every part of the globe is inhabited, new territory must, as a rule, be obtained at the cost of its possessors—that is to say, by conquest, which thus becomes a law of necessity.
The right of conquest is universally acknowledged. At first the procedure is pacific. Over-populated countries pour a stream of emigrants into other States and territories. These submit to the legislature of the new country, but try to obtain favourable conditions of existence for themselves at the cost of the original inhabitants, with whom they compete. This amounts to conquest.
The right of colonization is also recognized. Vast territories inhabited by uncivilized masses are occupied by more highly civilized States, and made subject to their rule. Higher civilization and the correspondingly greater power are the foundations of the right to annexation. This right is, it is true, a very indefinite one, and it is impossible to determine what degree of civilization justifies annexation and subjugation. The impossibility of finding a legitimate limit to these international relations has been the cause of many wars. The subjugated nation does not recognize this right of subjugation, and the more powerful civilized nation refuses to admit the claim of the subjugated to independence. This situation becomes peculiarly critical when the conditions of civilization have changed in the course of time. The subject nation has, perhaps, adopted higher methods and conceptions of life, and the difference in civilization has consequently lessened. Such a state of things is growing ripe in British India.
Lastly, in all times the right of conquest by war has been admitted. It may be that a growing people cannot win colonies from uncivilized races, and yet the State wishes to retain the surplus population which the mother-country can no longer feed. Then the only course left is to acquire the necessary territory by war. Thus the instinct of self-preservation leads inevitably to war, and the conquest of foreign soil. It is not the possessor, but the victor, who then has the right.…
In such cases might gives the right to occupy or to conquer. Might is at once the supreme right, and the dispute as to what is right is decided by the arbitrament of war. War gives a biologically just decision, since its decisions rest on the very nature of things.…
If we regard the life of the individual or of the nation as something purely material, as an incident which terminates in death and outward decay, we must logically consider that the highest goal which man can attain is the enjoyment of the most happy life and the greatest possible diminution of all bodily suffering. The State will be regarded as a sort of assurance office, which guarantees a life of undisturbed possession and enjoyment in the widest meaning of the word. We must endorse the view which Wilhelm von Humboldt professed in his treatise on the limits of the activity of the State.35 The compulsory functions of the State must be limited to the assurance of property and life. The State will be considered as a law-court, and the individual will be inclined to shun war as the greatest conceivable evil.
If, on the contrary, we consider the life of men and of States as merely a fraction of a collective existence, whose final purpose does not rest on enjoyment, but on the development of intellectual and moral powers, and if we look upon all enjoyment merely as an accessory of the chequered conditions of life, the task of the State will appear in a very different light. The State will not be to us merely a legal and social insurance office, political union will not seem to us to have the one object of bringing the advantages of civilization within the reach of the individual; we shall assign to it the nobler task of raising the intellectual and moral powers of a nation to the highest expansion, and of securing for them that influence on the world which tends to the combined progress of humanity. We shall see in the State, as Fichte taught, an exponent of liberty to the human race, whose task it is to put into practice the moral duty on earth. “The State,” says Treitschke, “is a moral community. It is called upon to educate the human race by positive achievement, and its ultimate object is that a nation should develop in it and through it into a real character; that is, alike for nation and individuals, the highest moral task.”
This highest expansion can never be realized in pure individualism. Man can only develop his highest capacities when he takes his part in a community, in a social organism, for which he lives and works. He must be in a family, in a society, in the State, which draws the individual out of the narrow circles in which he otherwise would pass his life, and makes him a worker in the great common interests of humanity. The State alone, so Schleiermacher once taught, gives the individual the highest degree of life.36
War, from this standpoint, will be regarded as a moral necessity, if it is waged to protect the highest and most valuable interests of a nation. As human life is now constituted, it is political idealism which calls for war, while materialism—in theory, at least—repudiates it.
If we grasp the conception of the State from this higher aspect, we shall soon see that it cannot attain its great moral ends unless its political power increases. The higher object at which it aims is closely correlated to the advancement of its material interests. It is only the State which strives after an enlarged sphere of influence that creates the conditions under which mankind develops into the most splendid perfection. The development of all the best human capabilities and qualities can only find scope on the great stage of action which power creates. But when the State renounces all extension of power, and recoils from every war which is necessary for its expansion; when it is content to exist, and no longer wishes to grow; when “at peace on sluggard’s couch it lies,” then its citizens become stunted. The efforts of each individual are cramped, and the broad aspect of things is lost. This is sufficiently exemplified by the pitiable existence of all small States, and every great Power that mistrusts itself falls victim to the same curse.
All petty and personal interests force their way to the front during a long period of peace. Selfishness and intrigue run riot, and luxury obliterates idealism. Money acquires an excessive and unjustifiable power, and character does not obtain due respect.…
War, in opposition to peace, does more to arouse national life and to expand national power than any other means known to history. It certainly brings much material and mental distress in its train, but at the same time it evokes the noblest activities of the human nature. This is especially so under present-day conditions, when it can be regarded not merely as the affair of Sovereigns and Governments, but as the expression of the united will of a whole nation.
All petty private interests shrink into insignificance before the grave decision which a war involves. The common danger unites all in a common effort, and the man who shirks this duty to the community is deservedly spurned. This union contains a liberating power which produces happy and permanent results in the national life. We need only recall the uniting power of the War of Liberation37 or the Franco-German War38 and their historical consequences. The brutal incidents inseparable from every war vanish completely before the idealism of the main result. All the sham reputations which a long spell of peace undoubtedly fosters are unmasked. Great personalities take their proper place; strength, truth, and honour come to the front and are put into play.…
The individual can perform no nobler moral action than to pledge his life on his convictions, and to devote his own existence to the cause which he serves, or even to the conception of the value of ideals to personal morality. Similarly, nations and States can achieve no loftier consummation than to stake their whole power on upholding their independence, their honour, and their reputation.
Such sentiments, however, can only be put into practice in war. The possibility of war is required to give the national character that stimulus from which these sentiments spring, and thus only are nations enabled to do justice to the highest duties of civilization by the fullest development of their moral forces. An intellectual and vigorous nation can experience no worse destiny than to be lulled into a Phaecian39 existence by the undisputed enjoyment of peace.
From this point of view, efforts to secure peace are extraordinarily detrimental to the national health so soon as they influence politics. The States which from various considerations are always active in this direction are sapping the roots of their own strength. The United States of America, e.g., in June, 1911, championed the ideas of universal peace in order to be able to devote their undisturbed attention to money-making and the enjoyment of wealth, and to save the three hundred million dollars which they spend on their army and navy; they thus incur a great danger, not so much from the possibility of a war with England or Japan, but precisely because they try to exclude all chance of contest with opponents of their own strength, and thus avoid the stress of great political emotions, without which the moral development of the national character is impossible. If they advance farther on this road, they will one day pay dearly for such a policy.
Again, from the Christian standpoint we arrive at the same conclusion. Christian morality is based, indeed, on the law of love. “Love God above all things, and thy neighbour as thyself.” This law can claim no significance for the relations of one country to another, since its application to politics would lead to a conflict of duties. The love which a man showed to another country as such would imply a want of love for his own countrymen. Such a system of politics must inevitably lead men astray. Christian morality is personal and social, and in its nature cannot be political. Its object is to promote morality of the individual, in order to strengthen him to work unselfishly in the interests of the community. It tells us to love our individual enemies, but does not remove the conception of enmity. Christ Himself said: “I am not come to send peace on earth, but a sword.” His teaching can never be adduced as an argument against the universal law of struggle. There never was a religion which was more combative than Christianity. Combat, moral combat, is its very essence. If we transfer the ideas of Christianity to the sphere of politics, we can claim to raise the power of the State—power in the widest sense, not merely from the material aspect—to the highest degree, with the object of the moral advancement of humanity, and under certain conditions the sacrifice may be made which a war demands. Thus, according to Christianity, we cannot disapprove of war in itself, but must admit that it is justified morally and historically.
Again, we should not be entitled to assume that from the opposite, the purely materialistic, standpoint war is entirely precluded. The individual who holds such views will certainly regard it with disfavour, since it may cost him life and prosperity. The State, however, as such can also come from the materialistic standpoint to a decision to wage war, if it believes that by a certain sacrifice of human lives and happiness the conditions of life of the community may be improved.
The loss is restricted to comparatively few, and, since the fundamental notion of all materialistic philosophy inevitably leads to selfishness, the majority of the citizens have no reason for not sacrificing the minority in their own interests. Thus, those who from the materialistic standpoint deny the necessity of war will admit its expediency from motives of self-interest.
Reflection thus shows not only that war is an unqualified necessity, but that it is justifiable from every point of view.…
With the cessation of the unrestricted competition, whose ultimate appeal is to arms, all real progress would soon be checked, and a moral and intellectual stagnation would ensue which must end in degeneration. So, too, when men lose the capacity of gladly sacrificing the highest material blessings—life, health, property, and comfort—for ideals; for the maintenance of national character and political independence; for the expansion of sovereignty and territory in the interests of the national welfare; for a definite influence in the concert of nations according to the scale of their importance in civilization; for intellectual freedom from dogmatic and political compulsion; for the honour of the flag as typical of their own worth—then progressive development is broken off, decadence is inevitable, and ruin at home and abroad is only a question of time. History speaks with no uncertain voice on this subject. It shows that valour is a necessary condition of progress. Where with growing civilization and increasing material prosperity war ceases, military efficiency diminishes, and the resolution to maintain independence under all circumstances fails, there the nations are approaching their downfall, and cannot hold their own politically or racially.…
These efforts for peace would, if they attained their goal, not merely lead to general degeneration, as happens everywhere in Nature where the struggle for existence is eliminated, but they have a direct damaging and unnerving effect. The apostles of peace draw large sections of a nation into the spell of their Utopian efforts, and they thus introduce an element of weakness into the national life; they cripple the justifiable national pride in independence, and support a nerveless opportunist policy by surrounding it with the glamour of a higher humanity, and by offering it specious reasons for disguising its own weakness. They thus play the game of their less scrupulous enemies, just as the Prussian policy, steeped in the ideas of universal peace, did in 1805 and 1806, and brought the State to the brink of destruction.…
Source: Friedrich von Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War, http://
1. Emer de Vattel (1714–67) was a Swiss scholar who in 1758 published The Law of Nations.
2. Friedrich von Gentz (1764–1832) was a Prussian diplomat who in 1806 published Fragments upon the Balance of Power in Europe.
3. Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868), was a British statesman of the early- to mid-nineteenth century. An advocate of free trade and passionate enemy of the slave trade, Brougham was Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain from 1830 to 1834.
4. Fought in Manchuria in February–March 1906, the Battle of Mukden was the largest and most decisive land engagement of the Russo-Japanese War.
5. The kaiser’s visit sparked the First Moroccan Crisis (see narrative).
6. The German Foreign Ministry, so named for the street in Berlin on which its offices were located.
7. Théophile Delcassé was the French foreign minister who negotiated the Anglo-French Entente. German pressure on France during the Morocco crisis brought about his resignation in 1906.
8. Ernest Monis and Joseph Caillaux were successive prime ministers of France in 1911–12. Both men, in contrast with their predecessors, sought better relations with Germany. Caillaux was forced to resign after it was revealed that he had entered into negotiations with Berlin without having first informed Armand Fallières, the president of France at the time.
9. In July 1905 Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II met on the island of Björkö, just off Russia’s Baltic coast. There they signed a defensive alliance, promising mutual aid if either were attacked. Neither monarch, however, had consulted with his government before doing so, and Russia’s prime minister and foreign minister pointed out that the treaty violated the country’s previously made commitment to France. Therefore, it was never ratified.
10. The tsar and the kaiser met again in July 1912, this time at Port Baltic, accompanied by their foreign ministers. While no treaty was signed, the two monarchs announced that relations between Russia and Germany were “harmonious.”
11. “Imperfect law.”
12. Friedrich Carl von Savigny (1779–1861) was a well-known legal scholar who headed Prussia’s judicial system in the 1850s.
13. The government of the Ottoman Empire was often referred to as “the Sublime Porte.”
14. That is, Islamic.
15. That is, a balancing machine.
16. These treaties of Nijmegen (1679) and Ryswick (1697), both signed on Dutch soil, ended major wars in which Holland was part of the winning coalition.
17. Literally, “high politics”; Treitschke is referring here to the realm of power politics.
18. “In these circumstances”; that is, Treitschke is claiming that there is no obligation to adhere to the terms of treaties when circumstances change.
19. There were actually two treaties of Tilsit signed within two days of one another in 1807. Treitschke is referring to the second, concluded June 9 between France and Prussia, in which the latter was forced to surrender nearly half its territory to neighboring French client states, as well as to pay a sizable indemnity to France.
20. The Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont sought to create a unified Italy in 1848 by launching a war against Austria to drive the Habsburgs from the Italian provinces of Lombardy and Venetia. The result was failure, leading to the promise to “begin again.” In 1859 the Piedmontese got another chance, and this time, with the support of France, they were able to defeat the Austrians, and then go on to create the Kingdom of Italy.
21. The Eastern Question first emerged in the late eighteenth century, and concerned the fate of lands in the Middle East and southeastern Europe as the Ottoman Empire lost its hold over those territories.
22. Namely, the Crimean War of 1854–56, when the Ottomans granted free access through the straits to their British and French allies, allowing them to invade Russian territory.
23. Danilevskii is including in “England” all of the British Empire, which at the time of his writing encompassed over 425,000 square miles—50,000 more square miles than the entirety of the Russian Empire.
24. About thirty-five meters.
25. A verst is 500 sazhens, or just over a kilometer.
26. Latin for “divide and conquer”; that is, Danilevskii is claiming that the Habsburgs have intentionally set against one another the various Slavic groups under their rule, so as better to keep them under control.
27. Ruthenia, at that time part of Hungary.
28. That is, Bohemia.
29. That is, the Crimean War.
30. Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800) was a successful Russian general of the late eighteenth century.
31. In the nineteenth century, China and Japan were both subject to aggression from Europeans and Americans seeking trade.
32. German for “drive toward the East,” an expression favored by German nationalists who sought to conquer and colonize eastern Europe.
33. Matthew 4:4.
34. Heraclitus of Ephesus.
35. D. W. von Humboldt, “Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkelt des Staates zu bestimmen” [Ideas for an attempt to determine the limits of the effectiveness of the State].
36. Bernhardi note: To expand the idea of the State into that of humanity, and thus to entrust apparently higher duties to the individual, leads to error, since in a human race conceived as a whole struggle and, by Implication, the most essential vital principle would be ruled out. Any action in favour of collective humanity outside the limits of the State and nationality is impossible. Such conceptions belong to the wide domain of Utopias.
37. The wars of the German states against Napoleon in 1813–14, in which French forces were driven from Central Europe.
38. Of 1870–71.
39. In Homer’s The Odyssey, this was the name given to the inhabitants of Scheria (modern-day Corfu), who were known for their hedonism.