I love peace, but none other than a good, steadfast, honorable peace. Socrates and Plato would have thought like me if they had stood in the cursed position which I assumed in this world.
Certainly I know the value of peace, the comforts of society, the joys of life; I too wish to be happy like anyone else. However, as much as I desire these benefits, so little may I purchase them through baseness and dishonor. Philosophy teaches us to do our duty, to serve the Fatherland faithfully even with our own blood, to sacrifice to it our peace, yes even our very existence.
Friedrich II in his posthumous works24
I declare and affirm, before the world and posterity, that I hold the false cleverness with which the small minds wish to withdraw themselves from danger to be the most corrupting thing that fear and anxiety can inspire; that I would hold the wildest despair to be wiser if it were totally impossible for us to meet the danger with a manly courage, that is, with calm but firm decision and clear consciousness.
That I do not forget the warning events of the old and new times, the wise teachings of whole centuries, the noble examples of well-known peoples, in the giddiness of the anxiety of our days, and give up the history of the world for one page of a lying newspaper.
That I feel myself devoid of any selfishness, that I can avow every thought and every feeling in me before all my fellow citizens with a clear brow; that I would find myself only too happy to find a glorious downfall one day in the splendid battle for the freedom and dignity of the Fatherland.
Does this belief in myself and in those of like mind deserve the contempt and the disdain of our fellow citizens?
Posterity will decide on this!
I lay down this page on the holy altar of history in the firm conviction that, if the storm of the times blows it away, one day a respectable priest of this temple will carefully take it up and bind it into the yearbook of the life of the much-agitated peoples.
Then will posterity judge and save from a damning verdict those who have courageously fought against the current of corruption and retained faithfully as a god their feeling of duty in their bosom.
Carl von Clausewitz
The citation from Clausewitz is taken from Deutsche Geschichtsquellen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, edited by the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Science, 1966, Vol.45 (Documents from the Decedent’s Estate…).
It dates from the Napoleonic Period of Prussia and Germany, when Goethe accepted the French Legion of Honor, Kleist25 committed suicide a few days after his last discussions against the occupation, and von der Marwitz26 rather went to prison than follow his king, who had been forced to ally himself with the French.
It was the time of Napoleon’s war against Russia. This declaration was sent to Gneisenau27 as a secret confession. The author says in a foreword that he should have indeed mentioned many names: “By itself, it seemed that there was in the matter a reputed personal feud between parties — so that the people would not think that it was basically a hidden Clientelism28 and not in fact…”