an, Nietzsche. Nine out
of ten quotations are taken from the political treatises of the
famous Berlin professor, and the whole spirit of Bernhardi's book is
summed up in the motto borrowed from Zarathustra and inscribed on the
front page of the volume:

"War and courage have achieved more great things than the love of our
neighbour. It is not your sympathy, but your bravery, which has
hitherto saved the shipwrecked of existence.

"'What is good?' you ask. To be brave is good."[16]

[16] Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra," First Part, 10th
Speech.

It is no less characteristic of contemporary German political
philosophy that from beginning to end Bernhardi maintains consciously,
deliberately, a purely national attitude, and that he does not even
attempt to rise to a higher and wider point of view. Indeed, the main
issue and cardinal problem, the relation of nationality to humanity,
the conflict between the duties we owe to the one and the duties we
owe to the other, is contemptuously relegated to a footnote (p. 19).
To Bernhardi a nation is not a means to an end, a necessary organ of
universal humanity, and therefore subordinate to humanity. A nation is
an end in itself. It is the ultimate reality. And the preservation and
the increase of the power of the State is the ultimate criterion of
all right. "My country, right or wrong," is the General's whole system
of moral philosophy. Yet, curiously enough, Bernhardi speaks of
Germany as the apostle, not only of a national culture, but of
universal culture, as the champion of civilization, and he indulges in
the usual platitudes on this fertile subject. And he does not even
realize that in so doing he is guilty of a glaring contradiction; he
does not realize that once he adopts this standpoint of universal
culture, he introduces an argument and assumes a position which are
above and outside nationalism. For either the German nation is
self-sufficient, and all culture is centred in and absorbed in
Germany, in which case Prussian nationalism would be historically and
philosophically justified; or culture is something higher and more
comprehensive and less exclusive, in which case national aims must be
estimated and appraised with reference to a higher aim, and a national
policy must be judged according as it furthers or runs counter to the
universal ideals of humanity.

General von Bernhardi starts his survey of the international situation
with the axiom that G