confiscation is adopted, it will try other expedients. In the last resort, it may appeal to foreign aid. For the moment this counter-revolutionary tendency, popularized by a conservative press, undoubtedly has the sympathy of most of our English middle class. The issue is not understood. Our public sees that revolutionary Russia is useless as an aggressive element in the war, it forgets that after May, 1915, Tsarist Russia did no better. The plain fact is that this military failure is not so much moral as material. Three nations in Europe have shown the capacity to conduct war year after year on the modern scale: France, Britain, and Germany. Austria, backward when compared with these three, advanced when compared with Russia, is almost at the end of her endurance. It is only the developed industries, the elaborate railways, the good roads, the diffused education, the habit of orderly work of a modern civilization, which enables Britain, France, and Germany to endure the strain. Russia, with her infant industries, her sparse railways, her execrable roads, her general illiteracy and the slack rhythm of unorganized peasant labor, is unable to adapt herself to the trial. The food problem threatens this winter to make general famine, and the reason is primarily that the whole capacity of the railways is required to feed the army at the front. Production has fallen off, but distribution is the chief problem. No gallant Cossack adventurer, however childlike, can alter a situation like this. Neither Kerensky's speeches, nor the Soviet proclamations, nor even the death penalty, can enable a backward, neglected, primitive, agricultural country to wage war on the modern industrial scale.

The chief difference between revolution and counter-revolution is that while the former appeals to us to moderate our war aims, summons us to council at Stockholm, and works with all its sincerity for an early general peace, the latter would be only too likely to seek an accommodation by some devious back way. What the counter-revolutionary party does as an opposition, or might do if it were in power, is

determined, however, not so much by its opinions on European policy as by the exigencies of the internal Russian struggle. It is battling for the rights of property as it conceives them, it is opposing a movement which has latent in it a social revolution. It will make war and peace, it will call in the foreigner or drive out the foreigner, according as it reckons that one course or the other will serve its class interests in its dire peril. The internal lines of division in Russia are fast becoming sharper and deeper than any frontier.

1

THE GERMAN IDEAL OF THE STATE 1

HEINRICH VON TREITSCHKE

[Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-1896) was born in Saxony and first came into prominence as lecturer on history at the University of Leipzig. His ardent advocacy of German unity under Prussian leadership in 1866 caused him to remove to Berlin, where from 1873 he was Professor of History in the University of Berlin. His chief works are "Die Politik' (1897-1898) and his "History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century" (1874-1894). During his lifetime he was the most popular and influential exponent of the Hohenzollern theory of the supremacy of the state over the individual and of the righteousness and necessity of war.]

Let us now apply the standard of a deeper and real Christian civilization to the State, and let us bear in mind that the existence of this great collective personality is power, and that therefore the highest moral duty of the State is to foster this power. The individual is bound to sacrifice himself for the next higher community of which he is a member; but the State itself is the highest among the communities of men, and therefore the duty of self-abnegation cannot apply to it. The Christian duty of self-sacrifice for something higher does not exist for the State, for the reason that there is nothing above and beyond it in the world's history, and consequently it cannot sacrifice itself for another. When the State sees its downfall approaching, we praise it if it goes to its downfall sword in hand. A sacrifice for a foreign nation is not only non-moral, but it is contrary to the idea of self-assertion which is the highest law of the State.

Thus we find it necessary to distinguish between public and private morality. The rank of the various duties must

1 From "Die Politik," translated for "Germany's War Mania." London,

1914.

necessarily be very different for the State and the individual man. There is a whole series of these duties which are imposed upon the individual which are absolutely out of question for the State. The State's highest law is that of selfassertion; that is for it the absolute morality. Therefore, one must assert that of all political sins, the worst and most contemptible is weakness; it is the sin against the holy ghost of politics. In private life certain weaknesses of the soul are excusable. But of these there is no question in the State; for the State is might, and if it should belie its very essence, there would be no judgment severe enough for it. Think of the reign of Frederick William IV. Magnanimity and gratitude are certainly political virtues, but only when they are not opposed to the main object of politics, the maintenance of its own power. In the year 1849 the thrones of every possible German principality were shaken. Frederick William took a step which in itself was justifiable; he sent Prussian troops into Saxony and Bavaria, and restored order therein. But now came the mortal sin. Were the Prussians there in order to shed their blood for the King of Saxony or of Bavaria? There must be some permanent advantage for Prussia to be derived therefrom. We had the little ones in our grip; we only needed to allow the troops to remain there until these princes had adapted themselves to the new German Empire. Instead of this, the King withdrew his troops and quite properly the little ones made a long nose behind their backs as they marched away. That was simply unthinkable weakness; the blood of the Prussian nation had been sacrificed for nothing.

It further follows from the nature of the State as sovereign power, that it can recognize no arbiter above itself, and that moreover constitutional obligations must be subject in a last resort to its jurisdiction. We have to bear that in mind in order that in times of crisis we may not judge like Philistines from the advocate's point of view. When Prussia broke the treaty of Tilsit, she was from the standpoint of the civil

procedure in the wrong. But who is there to-day who will have the brazen face to assert this? Even the French could not do so any longer. That also holds in the case of national treaties which are not quite so immoral as was that one enforced on Prussia by France. Thus every State reserves to itself the right to judge of its treaty obligations for itself, and the historian cannot here step in with his purely conventional standards. He must ask the deeper question as to whether the unconditional duty of self-preservation does not justify the State. It was thus in Italy in 1859. Piedmont was the virtual aggressor; and Austria and her servile dependents in Germany did not fail to complain of the disturbance of the everlasting peace. But in reality Italy had been for years in a state of siege. No noble nation will ever tolerate such a position, and in reality it was not Piedmont, but Austria, which took the offensive, because she had for years shamefully sinned by helping herself to Italy's greatest

treasures.

Thus it is the upholding of its own power that is the supreme moral duty of the State. But if we follow up the natural consequence of this truth, it becomes clear that the State must only set itself moral aims, or else it would be contradicting itself.

Up to now the earnest thinker can hardly find any subject for disagreement, but now we come to a series of most difficult questions with the consideration of how far political aims, moral in themselves, may be allowed the use of means which in civil life would be considered reprehensible. The well-known jesuitical saying is in its unvarnished directness rough and radical, but no one can deny that it contains a certain amount of truth. There are in political life innumerable cases, as in the life of individuals, in which the use of pure methods is quite impossible. If it be possible, if it be feasible to obtain an objective moral in itself by moral means, then these are to be preferred even though their action may be slower and more inconvenient.