tiny with clear gaze, be prepared for any
sacrifices which the present or future may demand.

These sacrifices, so far as they lie within the military and financial
sphere, depend mainly on the idea of what Germany is called upon to
strive for and attain in the present and the future. Only those who
share my conception of the duties and obligations of the German people,
and my conviction that they cannot be fulfilled without drawing the
sword, will be able to estimate correctly my arguments and conclusions
in the purely military sphere, and to judge competently the financial
demands which spring out of it. It is only in their logical connection
with the entire development, political and moral, of the State that the
military requirements find their motive and their justification.

CHAPTER I

THE RIGHT TO MAKE WAR

Since 1795, when Immanuel Kant published in his old age his treatise on
"Perpetual Peace," many have considered it an established fact that war
is the destruction of all good and the origin of all evil. In spite of
all that history teaches, no conviction is felt that the struggle
between nations is inevitable, and the growth of civilization is
credited with a power to which war must yield. But, undisturbed by such
human theories and the change of times, war has again and again marched
from country to country with the clash of arms, and has proved its
destructive as well as creative and purifying power. It has not
succeeded in teaching mankind what its real nature is. Long periods of
war, far from convincing men of the necessity of war, have, on the
contrary, always revived the wish to exclude war, where possible, from
the political intercourse of nations.

This wish and this hope are widely disseminated even to-day. The
maintenance of peace is lauded as the only goal at which statesmanship
should aim. This unqualified desire for peace has obtained in our days a
quite peculiar power over men's spirits. This aspiration finds its
public expression in peace leagues and peace congresses; the Press of
every country and of every party opens its columns to it. The current in
this direction is, indeed, so strong that the majority of Governments
profess--outwardly, at any rate--that the necessity of maintaining peace
is the real aim of their policy; while when a war breaks out the
aggressor is universally stigmatized, and all Governments exert
themselves, partly in reality, partly in pretence, to extinguis