The Confessions of Frederick the Great, and the Life of Frederick the Great

Preface

THE origin of the gospel of inhumanity preached by von Bemhardi in his Germany and the Next War is to be found in the Confessions of Frederick the Great, which came into my hands accidentally a short time ago. The Rev. Graham McEhoy, whom I met at a friend's house, who had noticed the resemblance, lent me an eighteenth century duodecimo containing an EngHsh translation of the first five " Mornings" of the Confessions, which up till then were unknown to me. And about the same time the editor of The Globe showed me the proof of an article which he had commissioned upon this book. It was a learned and intuitive paper, and a perusal of it and the book made me explore the subject at the British Museum. There I found the other two "Mornings," in another little eighteenth -century volume in their original French, and one of them, the highly important "Morning" which deals with Finance, had apparently never been translated into English on account of its banality.

Banal it is, but it contributes not a little to proving that the Confessions really were written by Frederick, for it sets forth, so naturally that one can almost hear Frederick saying the words, iv Preface

his nostrums for improving the administration and the yield of the Prussian taxes.

But intrinsic evidence is not necessary, for the manuscript of the Confessions in French has been preserved in Frederick's own handwriting, and if it were necessary, I have the opinion of the accomplished French scholar to whom I sent, to be typed, my translation of "Mornings" VI. and VII. When I met her, I asked if she knew what she had been typing. "No," she replied, "and what is more, I cannot be certain whether the translation is from the French or from the German" — the fact being that Frederick, writing in French, was unable to divest himself of Germanisms.

Even had von Bemhardi not openly confessed, by allusion, his obligations to Frederick, no one who had read the two books could fail to perceive that the seed of Germany and the Next War is to be found in the extremely amusing and shameless Confessions of Frederick the Great. It is obvious in all its nakedness.

And since von Bernhardi constantly admits his indebtedness to Treitschke, the historian of the Prussification of Germany, it seemed to me that I could offer no more interesting commentary on Frederick's Confessions than a translation of what Treitschke wrote about the great Frederick. This, like most of Treitschke's works, had never been translated into English. It proved very difficult to translate, and as my knowledge of German is slight, Miss Louise Scheerer made a literal

Preface v

translation of it, which I transposed, as far as I was able, into current phraseology. Mr. Sidney Whitman, the learned author of our chief books about Bismarck, who is second to no EngHsh writer on contemporary Germany and Austria, had almost completed explaining the phrases which baffled us, when he introduced Dr. Oscar Levy, the editor of the great eighteen- volume translation of Nietzsche, and the chief authority on Nietzsche in Great Britain. Dr. Lev^^ has most generously gone through our entire translation to see that no mistranslations have crept in.

It may be taken, therefore, that whatever the literary faults, due entirely to me, may be, the translation is accurate, a matter of immense importance where Treitschke, who is almost as difficult to translate as Carlyle would be, is concerned. Treitschke, Hke Carlyle, is a great word-coiner and word-joiner, and pours forth torrents of ideas. But he is not more reliable than Macaulay, for he generally applied a similarly encyclopaedic knowledge with the partisanship of an advocate rather than the justice of a judge.

What sort of man Frederick was I shall endeavour to show in an introduction more within the comprehension of a plain man than he would be Hkely to find Treitschke's pregnant analysis of Frederick's share in Prussification.

I shall not detain the reader by specifying the actual passages in the Confessions which are vi Preface

paralleled by von Bemhardi, but shall prefer to point out how Frederick's unblushing disciple has put into practice their Royal Larkinism, their gospel of Tuum est meum.

D. S.

London, December, 1914.

Foreword

THERE is a sharp conflict of opinion in regard to the causation of, or the responsibility for, the great struggle that is now desolating Europe and that has even extended to the furthermost coast of Asia. It is my own opinion, an opinion which is I believe held by the great majority of Americans, that this conflict will go down to history as the war of German aggression. The war has been described as the natural expression of what has come to be known as the HohenzoUem spirit and as the necessary result of the HohenzoUern poHcy. Berlin and London are at this time in accord on very few matters, but it is possible that this definition in regard to the inevitability of the European war imder the conditions existing would be accepted in both capitals.

Those who are studying the war with reference to its causes and its probable results, and particularly those who are in the position of Americans and can investigate the war conditions without reference to the safety, or at least to the immediate safety, of their own homes, may naturally be interested, therefore, in tracing the history of what is called the HohenzoUem spirit and the

vii viii Foreword

development of this all-important HohenzoUern policy.

The Hohenzollem family has shown a full measure of vitality and on the whole of persistence of purpose; but, like all historic families the record of which extends over centuries, its successive personalities have varied very greatly in individual force and in effectiveness, and also in the nature and extent of their contributions to the success of the family in the development of the realms over which they came to rule and in extending its influence upon the world outside of those realms.

When, in the thirteenth century, Conrad of HohenzoUern, at that time Burggrave of Nuremberg, directed his political ambitions toward North Germany, he doubtless indulged in the usual visions of personal glory for himself and for his family. He could hardly, however, have looked forward to the position that was to be secured, at the close of centuries of effort, by his HohenzoUern descendants. The first historic reference that we find to the HohenzoUerns is connected with the name of Tasselin, who was active in the time of Charlemagne, but the family of the ZoUern Castle comes into actual history only with the wanderjahr and the promotion of Burggrave Conrad. The beginning of the political power of the family may be said to date from 1 568 when the duchy of Prussia was made hereditary in the House of HohenzoUern. It is the state developed from the duchy of Prussia that

Foreword ix

to-day dominates the Empire of Germany and that is fighting for the domination of Europe. The real founder of the kingdom of Prussia and of the Empire that has developed from that kingdom was not the first King, Frederick I, to whom the crown came in 1701, but his father the great Elector of Brandenburg. It was the Elector whose force of will and organizing capacity instituted what might be called the Prussian system, under which the resources of Brandenburg and Prussia were later made so wonderfully effective. The son of the Elector, the first King, did not impress himself upon the history of the time ; while the service of the grandson, Frederick William I, was rendered in the form of saving up the resources in men and in money which were to be utilized so effectively by his son Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great.

The Confessions of Frederick were brought into

t print in an English edition in the latter part of the

^ eighteenth century, shortly after the death of the

King. In the frank obliviousness of any moral

responsibility for human, or at least for royal,

action, they recall the famous letters written by

* Lord Chesterfield for the guidance of his godson.

There is, of course, a wide difference between

the subjects considered by the two writers. The

Englishman is giving counsel, based upon his own

\ experience, for the success of his godson in social

and political life, while the Prussian is impressing

upon the young man who is to succeed him in the

X Foreword

control of the kingdom the principles and the policies by which such kingdom should be maintained and developed. The letters are, however, curiously similar in their frank — one may say their naive — disregard of moral principle as having anything to do either with the Ufe of an English courtier or with the work of a Prussian King.

With this utterance of King Frederick has been associated a biographical and critical study written by the historian Treitschke, who made himself the exponent of the HohenzoUern spirit. From these two works, so different in purpose and in character, the reader is able to secure a distinct and fairly complete picture of the nature, the methods, and the policy of Frederick the Great. He secures further an indication of the principles upon which Frederick's successor, William II, appears to have planned the policy of Germany with the purpose of shaping the destinies of Europe. In his Confessions, Frederick remarks that

it is not to eminence in virtues that our family owes its aggrandizement. The greater part of our princes have been rather remarkable for misconduct, but it was chance and circumstances that have been of service.

He complains that

his kingdom is not well situated and that the different portions of the territory are not well arranged to each

Foreword xi

other. They are dispersed or divided in such manner that they cannot mutually assist each other.

The series of wars waged by Frederick had for their purpose the correction of this troublesome irregularity of boundary; and he succeeded, through the appropriation from his neighbours of the pieces of territory needed, in rounding out the dominions of Prussia.

The principles set forth by Frederick for the guidance of his nephew in the development of the Prussian realm, principles based upon the King's own experience, are affirmed in substance one hundred and fifty years later, in their philosophic relation, by Nietzsche, Says Nietzsche:

A good war will sanctify any cause. . . . Active sympathy for the weak is more dangerous to the human race than any crime. ... At the bottom of all distinguished races, the beast of prey is not to be mistaken. To demand of strength that it should not assert itself as strength, that it should not be a will to oppression, a will to destruction, a will to domination, that it should not be athirst for foes and opposition and triumph, is precisely as senseless as to demand of weakness that it assert itself as strength.

A writer in a recent number of the Unpopular Review points out that Frederick was no hypocrite.

There never was a straighter monarch. He merely had the Prussian conscience. His suspicions of foreign powers are facts to be acted on, and he feels xii Foreword

that an act which in a foreign nation is that of a cutthroat is, when done in the behoof of Prussia, not only justified, but holy.

(We may compare with this the "scrap of paper," and the havoc wrought in Belgium for holy ends.) The article in the Review says further:

This kind of conscience is general in grim, martial, partially civilized nations which have been forged tough in the struggle for existence. Such peoples trust to their suspicions and their hates and they readily justify their own worst aggressions as simple anticipatory measures of self-defence. If such a nation can acquire the inventions and the resources of civilization without permitting civilization to abate these suspicions and hates, or impair the conviction that the nation can do no harm, such a nation will be more formidable in arms than any truly civilized state can hope to be.

Frederick tells his nephew that "religion is absolutely necessary in the state," but goes on to say that "it would not be wise in a King to have any religion himself . ..."

There is nothing [he says] that tyrannizes more over the head and heart than religion, because it neither agrees with our passions nor with those great political views by which a monarch ought to be guided. The true religion of a prince is his interest and his glory.

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Under the heading of "Justice," Frederick emphasizes with his nephew that,

we must do justice to all men, and especially to our own subjects when so doing would not overset or interfere with our own rights or wound our own authority. There ought to be no sort of equality between the right of the monarch and the right of the subject or slave.

Under the heading of "Pohtics," he expresses the opinion that,

to cheat or to deceive one's fellow-creatures is a mean and criminal action. . . . The term that has been invented to describe such action is Politics. ... I understand by this, dear nephew, that we are ever to try to cheat others. This is the way to secure the advantage, or, at least, to be on a footing with the rest of mankind; for you may rest persuaded that all the states of the world run the same career. . . . Never be ashamed of making alliances, but do not commit the stupid fault of not abandoning these alliances whenever it is to your interest so to do. . . . Stripping your neighbours is only to take away from them the means of doing an injury to yourself.

In a later chapter on what might be called "Applied Politics, " the King tells the nephew that he "will not trouble him with" a demonstration of the validity of the pretensions under which Silesia had been seized, but that he had "taken care to have these duly estabHshed by his orators." "It xiv Foreword

is good policy," continues Frederick, "to be always attempting something, and in any case to be perfectly persuaded that we have a right to everything that suits us." "To form alliances for one's advantage is a great maxim of state, and there are no powers that can excuse themselves for a neglect of this. . . ." It is evident, however, that "an alliance should be broken as soon as it becomes prejudicial. I have already, my dear nephew, told you that politics and villainy are almost synonymous terms." This is quite in Hne with the teachings of Chesterfield.

When a stranger comes to your court, overwhelm him with civilities, and take pains to have him constantly near you. . . . This is the best way to keep concealed from him the defects of your government.

One would suppose that in this counsel Frederick was foreshadowing the ingenious plan of his successor William II for the establishment of exchange professorships.

Under the heading of "Military Counsel," in his account of the management of his army Frederick says:

I ascertained who in the army were regular bandits. ... I closed my eyes to the oppressions committed by the general officers. . . . They work for me in working for themselves.

Visitors to Germany have been impressed, and particularly since 1871, with the general recogni-

Foreword xv

tion insisted upon by the military authorities, and accepted by the populace at large, of the superiority of the profession of arms. It is the belief of not a few friends of Germany that the dominating manner which actuates the army officers, and particularly those of Prussia, is not merely an annoyance to the civilians, but has proved a very bad training for the officers themselves, but this right to dominate has been insisted upon consistently in a long series of utterances of William II. In like manner Frederick says, "Always confer an air of superiority on the profession of arms. "

A century and a half later, Nietzsche writes: " The future of German civilization rests on the sons of the Prussian officers." It is because this principle was accepted by Frederick and has been developed by Frederick's successors, that the word has gone forth to Germany and the world that the German officer was something sacrosanct, and that for the safety and the development of the state he must be permitted to dominate the civilian. He was to be accepted as an awe-inspiring representative of the Kaiser. Any temporary annoyance to the civilian population was to be fully atoned for later by the glorious success of ''the Day."

The Confessions close with a chapter having to do with "Finance," in which Frederick places before his nephew with considerable detail his principles of taxation and the methods under which he managed the resources of the realm. It is xvi Foreword

evident from a study of these tables that the King was a wonderful organizer, and a good man of business. One may judge that he was a difficult bargainer to get the better of or to impose upon. It is probable that for the purpose of building up the realm of Prussia, a better instructor than Frederick could not have been found. It may be questioned to-day, however, whether the principles and policies which have been handed down to his successors by this the greatest of the HohenzoUerns may not in the end prove disastrous to Germany.

Macaulay, analyzing the successive wars of annexation of Frederick, says that "his selfish rapacity gave the signal to his neighbours. . . . His example quieted their sense of shame." The historian proceeds :

On the head of Frederick is to be placed all the blood which was shed in a war that raged during many years and in every quarter of the globe. . . . The evil produced by his wickedness was felt in lands where the name of Prussia was unknown; and in order that Frederick might rob a neighbour whom he had sworn to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the Great Lakes of North America.

The historian Treitschke on the other hand finds Frederick a hero after his own heart. He takes the same actions that had formed the text for Macaulay's excoriation and describes these in

Foreword xvii

such manner as to show that in his judgment they were necessary for the development of Prussia and of Germany, and for the proper carrying out of the destiny of the HohenzoUerns. Says Treitschke:

Since the days of Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the Midnight Sun, Germany had had no picture of a hero to whom the entire nation could look up with awe. . . . Frederick strode through the middle of the Great Powers and forced the Germans to believe again in the wonder of heroism. . . . He was a German, and the mainspring in this mighty nature is the ruthless, terrible German directness.

The historian remarks that

not without arbitrariness Frederick arranged the facts of history according to a one-sided view, but one-sidedness, turned towards life and light, is, after all, the privilege of the creative genius. . . .

And again :

Frederick recognized that it had become a necessity to enlarge the territory of his state . . . and his policy was to lift the new German state into expansion and power through the frightfulness of its weapons.

It may be noted that this term "frightfulness" has been utilized to-day in the instructions given to the generals who are occupying conquered territories in Belgium and in eastern France, as necessary for the terrorizing of the people.

xviii Foreword

Treitschke finds no ground for criticizing his hero "because no treaty or league could make him resign the right of deciding for himself, " that is to say, of selecting his own time for the breaking of his obligation. The historian points out, and with truth, that as early as 1756 Frederick had recognized that the continuing issue in Germany was whether it was to accept the supremacy of Prussia or of Austria. The question was decided for Germany a century later at Koniggratz by William I, Bismarck, and Moltke. The soldier, reading the account of the campaigns of the Seven Years' War, cannot withhold a full measure of admiration for the pluck, the persistence, the patience, and the genius which carried the little army intact through defeats, and through victories which were hardly less exhausting than defeats, and which saved the existence of the little kingdom; but the courage of the troops and the genius of their leader had, of course, nothing whatsoever to do with the morality of the cause for which they were fighting, a cause which for the larger portion of all the campaigns of Frederick was simply the appropriation of the territory of his neighbour.

Treitschke writes in reference to the "educational power of war" that the "alert self-reliance of the Prussians contrasted strongly with the inoffensive kindly modesty of the other Germans." The quality that Treitschke terms "self-reliance" has in later years been described by those less sympathetic with the Prussian spirit as self-

Foreword xix

sufficiency or dominating arrogance. The truth of either definition depends, of course, upon the point of view.

Treitschke says, naively,

that there then dawned upon Frederick the idea of the partition of Poland. It was his purpose to combat the grabbing land-greed of Russia. . . . The Poles were, in any case, deserving of no sympathy, for [says Treitschke] they were distinguished above all the nations of Europe by an insolent disregard of the rights and the nationalities of others.

In Treitschke's reference to the organization given by Frederick to his army, he refers to the decision to place the officers' commissions exclusively in the hands of the nobility. He goes on to say:

In the noble officers' corps there arose an aristocratic arrogance (Junkersinn) , which soon became more intolerable to the people than the coarse roughness of earlier times.

It is the belief of many that this characteristic of the corps of noble Prussian officers is stronger and more troublesome in the twentieth century than it was in the eighteenth.

Treitschke writes with full approval of Frederick's upholding of Christian toleration. He cites this as an old Prussian policy, and quotes Frederick's own words, " the people's conceptions of God

XX Foreword

and godly things cannot be made subject to a coercive law."

The defenders of the war policy of Germany of to-day contend that undue weight has been given to the utterances of the historian Treitschke, of the military scientist Bernhardi, and of the philosopher Nietzsche. When, however, it is possible to make clear that the germ of the teachings of historian, philosopher, and militarist is to be found in the recorded utterances of the greatest of the HohenzoUems, and when the HohenzoUem of to-day says frankly that he is doing what he can to carry out the ideals of the King who made Prussia a European power, it is not inaccurate to contend that the spirit and principles of Frederick, Treitschke, Nietzsche, and Bernhardi are expressed by the policies and enforced by the military power of William II.

Frederick did not dread the antagonism of his neighbours and had no fear of their criticism. He was prepared to realize that he could hardly expect friendliness of feeling from the states whose territory had been despoiled to make Prussia greater. The defenders of the policy of Kaiser William II point out that Germany is surrounded by a "steel ring of enemies," states which are opposed to her natural development. Every nation is, of necessity, in touch with neighbouring nations; and whether these nations are to hold one of their neighbours in friendship or in enmity depends, of course, largely, if not chiefly, upon her own

Foreword xxi

conduct and upon her observance in international relations of the principles of justice or of fair consideration. It is difficult to imagine that Germany should expect sympathetic friendship from Denmark (one third of whose territory had been snatched from her in 1864), or from France after the appropriation of Alsace-Lorraine and the institution in old French Lorraine of the great fortress of Metz threatening as it were with a mailed fist the heart of France. If Germany succeeds in the present struggle so that the annexation of Belgium as a province of the Empire {Reichsland) may be confirmed, it is hardly to be expected that for generations to come the Belgians, devastated by ruthless invasion and by the official burning of their cities, left in starvation through the appropriation of their food supplies, and crushed with heavy indemnities, some of which were imposed even after the territory had in form become a part of the German Empire, can regard with affection or with a feeling of loyal relation, their new rulers.

The reign of Frederick is a great example of the results of doctrines of efficiency carried to the nth. power without scruples or limitations, or consideration for the rights of others. It is this Hohenzollern ideal of efficiency which has produced the finest fighting machine that the world has ever seen, and which has placed back of that machine the magnificently organized resources of xxii Foreword

a great Empire. It is for Europe to decide whether it will permit itself to be dominated by the ideals, the policy, and the methods of the Hohenzollerns

Geo. Haven Putnam.

New York, January, 191 5.

Contents

PAGE

Foreword . . . . . . . iii

Preface ....... xix