Germany and the Next War eBook

Friedrich von Bernhardi
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 339 pages of information about Germany and the Next War.

Germany and the Next War eBook

Friedrich von Bernhardi
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 339 pages of information about Germany and the Next War.

The gulf between political and individual morality is not so wide as is generally assumed.  The power of the State does not rest exclusively on the factors that make up material power—­territory, population, wealth, and a large army and navy:  it rests to a high degree on moral elements, which are reciprocally related to the material.  The energy with which a State promotes its own interests and represents the rights of its citizens in foreign States, the determination which it displays to support them on occasion by force of arms, constitute a real factor of strength, as compared with all such countries as cannot bring themselves to let things come to a crisis in a like case.  Similarly a reliable and honourable policy forms an element of strength in dealings with allies as well as with foes.  A statesman is thus under no obligation to deceive deliberately.  He can from the political standpoint avoid all negotiations which compromise his personal integrity, and he will thereby serve the reputation and power of his State no less than when he holds aloof from political menaces, to which no acts correspond, and renounces all political formulas and phrases.

In antiquity the murder of a tyrant was thought a moral action, and the Jesuits have tried to justify regicide.[K] At the present day political murder is universally condemned from the standpoint of political morality.  The same holds good of preconcerted political deception.  A State which employed deceitful methods would soon sink into disrepute.  The man who pursues moral ends with unmoral means is involved in a contradiction of motives, and nullifies the object at which he aims, since he denies it by his actions.  It is not, of course, necessary that a man communicate all his intentions and ultimate objects to an opponent; the latter can be left to form his own opinion on this point.  But it is not necessary to lie deliberately or to practise crafty deceptions.  A fine frankness has everywhere been the characteristic of great statesmen.  Subterfuges and duplicity mark the petty spirit of diplomacy.

[Footnote K:  Mariana, “De rege et regis institutione.”  Toledo, 1598.]

Finally, the relations between two States must often be termed a latent war, which is provisionally being waged in peaceful rivalry.  Such a position justifies the employment of hostile methods, cunning, and deception, just as war itself does, since in such a case both parties are determined to employ them.  I believe after all that a conflict between personal and political morality may be avoided by wise and prudent diplomacy, if there is no concealment of the desired end, and it is recognized that the means employed must correspond to the ultimately moral nature of that end.

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Germany and the Next War from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.