Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/233

 aristocracy are officers of the staff; its capital is a camp."

He went on to characterise in words that bite deeper since Liége, Louvain, and Antwerp—

"Unhappily the gospel of the sword has sunk deeper into the entire Prussian people than any other in Europe. The social system being that of an army, and each citizen drilled man by man, there is no sign of national conscience in the matter. And this servile temper, begotten by this eternal drill, inclines a whole nation to repeat as if by word of command, and perhaps to believe, the convenient sophisms which the chief of its staff puts into their mouths."

His central belief was that power consists in bullying. Had he thought things over he might, perhaps, have noticed that it costs more strength to lift a man up than to knock him down. He chose the other way. His spiritual successors tell you that the meaning of the black, red, and white of the German tricolour is: "Through night and blood to the light." Germany had legitimate ambitions. There are ways of influencing the world that do not involve war: it was not powder, or bayonets, or even howitzers that laid Europe in intellectual bondage to Kant. Bismarck chose the formula of "Blood and Iron." What it cost he himself will tell us, speaking out of the shadows and desolation of old age. The quotation is from Busch, his less discreet Boswell—