Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/230



What is the Devil's Gospel? I take it that the three main articles are violence, intellect, and a certain malign splendour of domination. If that is the formula of the Courts of Hell, it is certainly the formula of Prussianism.

There is here no question of mere instinctive egotism. We are in presence of an Evangel of Conquest, fully worked out, and completely conscious of itself. Later in this series we shall have an opportunity of examining the wild work of some of the Berlin theorists of blackguardism. But before there was a theory, there was a fact. In the world of action Prussia had thrown up two huge mountain-peaks of achievement: Frederick the Great, so grossly flattered by Carlyle, and Bismarck. Between them yawns that Valley of Purification to which Jena marks the entrance. For that interregnum of humility Prussia is truly great: your heart beats with K[:o]rner, with Fichte, even with the cloudy Hegel. But two generations later the type is once more master: Frederick, reincarnated, calls himself Otto Eduarde Leopold Bismarck Sch[:o]nhausen. He is the modern Wotan to whom Germany has built her altars.