Now power counts before all.  Germany must possess armaments superior to those of all other nations.  The reason is plain.  The German Empire is a rock of peace, der Hort des Friedens.  The force which it accumulates is directed toward imposing upon mankind the German peace, the divine peace.  Since Germany represents peace, whoever opposes Germany intends war.  Now it is legitimate that Germany should arm to the teeth because she is the incarnation of peace, but the adversaries of Germany, who, in opposing Germany oppose peace, cannot have the same right.  It is the duty of Germany to carry her armaments to the maximum; other peoples have the right to arm only as Germany may permit.

Germany does not seek war.  On the contrary, she tries by inspiring terror to render it impossible.  But if some nation should profit or be capable of profiting by her love of peace to pretend to rights which offend her she will consent to punish that nation.  She will be pained by the violence she has to do to that nation and the severity which she has to use toward the guilty.  But soldier of God as she is, she cannot fail to her mission.  Any nation which refuses to do the will of Germany proves by that very fact its cultural inferiority and becomes guilty.  It must be chastised.

The method according to which Germany will make war is determined by these premises.  War is a return to the state of nature.  Germany yields to this temporary retrogression because she has to do with people of an inferior culture who must be taught a lesson, and must be spoken to in a language which they understand.  Now a characteristic of a state of nature is that force reigns undisputed.  In this very trait resides the sublime beauty of that state, its grandeur and its fecundity.  Don’t talk of that romantic chivalry which pretends in time of war to temper the violence of savage instincts by the intervention of feminine sensibility.  War is war. Krieg ist Krieg.  It isn’t child’s play, it isn’t sport where it is necessary to blend barbarity and humanity so as to conciliate and humanize them.  It is barbarity itself let loose as widely and fully as possible.  This is not perversity.  Man as man suffers in becoming barbarous, but the man who replaces God suppresses the feebleness of the creature.  He submits himself to the mysterious and sublime law in virtue of which evil is by so much more beneficent as it is achieved with resolution and completeness. Pecca fortiter.

The Nature of War.

The first article of the code of war is then the suppression of all sensibility, pity, humanity.  The nature of war is to kill and destroy.  The more it destroys and kills the sooner it comes to its ideal form.  Moreover, it is at bottom more humane the more inhuman it is, because the very terrors which its excesses inspire shorten it and make it less murderous.