altogether non existent in presentday Germany. Hence the unguided, wavering and unsure manner of attending to our Folk’s interests becomes understandable, as does also the whole confusion of our public opinion. Hence also the incredible capers of our foreign policy which always end unhappily without the Folk being even at least capable of judging the persons responsible and really calling them to account. No, one does not know what to do.
To be sure there are not a few people today who fully believe we should do nothing. They boil down their opinion to the effect that Germany today must be clever and reserved, that she engage herself nowhere, that we must keep the development of events well in view but ourselves not take part in them, in order, one day, to assume the role of the laughing third one, who reaps the benefits, while the other two quarrel.
Yes, yes, our present bourgeois statesmen are so clever and wise. A political judgement which is troubled by no knowledge of history. There are not a few proverbs which have become a real curse for our Folk. For example, the wiser one yields, or clothes make the man, or one can get through the whole land with hat in hand, or when two fight, the third rejoices.
In the life of nations, at least, the last proverb applies only in a wholly conditional sense. [And this for the following reason] Namely, if two quarrel hopelessly within a nation, then a third who is outside a nation can win. In the life of nations with one another, however, the ultimate success will be had by States which deliberately engage in disputes because the possibility of increasing their strength lies only in a quarrel. There is no historical event in the world that cannot be judged from two points of view. The neutrals on one side always confront the interventionist on the other. And, in general, the neutrals will always get the worst of it, whereas the interventionists rather can claim the benefits for themselves, insofar, indeed, as the party on which they wagered does not lose.
In the life of nations this means the following: If two mighty powers quarrel on this globe, the more or less small or large surrounding States either can take part in this struggle, or keep their distance from it. In one case the possibility of a gain is not excluded, insofar as the participation takes place on the side which carries off the victory. Regardless who wins, however, the neutrals will have no other fate save enmity with the remaining victor State. Up to now none of the globe’s great States has arisen on the basis of neutrality as a principle of political action, but only through struggle. If towering power States as such are on Earth, all that remains for small States to do is either to renounce their future altogether, or to fight with the more favourable coalition and under its protection, and thus increase their own strength. For the role of the laughing third always presupposes that this third already has a power. But whoever is always neutral will never achieve power. For to the extent that a Folk’s power lies in its inner value, the more does it find its ultimate expression in the organisational form of a Folk’s fighting forces on the battlefield, created by the will of this inner value. This form, however, will never rise if it is not put to the test from time to time. Only under the forge hammer of world history do a Folk’s eternal values become the steel and iron with which history is made. But he who avoids battles will never attain the strength to fight battles. And he who never fights battles will never be the heir of those who struggle with each other in a military conflict. For the previous heirs of world history were not, for instance, Folks with cowardly concepts of neutrality, but young Folks with better swords. Neither Antiquity nor the Middle Ages nor modern times knows even a single example of any power States coming into being save in permanent struggle. Up to now, however, the historical heirs have always been power States. In the life of nations, to be sure, even a third can be the heir when two quarrel. But then from the very outset this third is already the power which deliberately lets two other powers quarrel in order to defeat them once and for all later without a great sacrifice on its part.
Thereby neutrality loses the character of passive non participation in events altogether, and instead assumes that of a conscious political operation. Obviously no sagacious State leadership will begin a struggle without weighing the size of its possible stakes and comparing it with the size of the adversary’s stakes. But if it has perceived the impossibility of being able to fight against a certain powers, all the more so will it be forced to try to fight together with this power. For then the strength of the hitherto weaker power can eventually grow out of this common struggle, in order if necessary to fight for is own vital interests also against the latter. Let no one say that then no power would enter into an alliance with a State which some day itself might become a danger.
Alliances do not present policy aims, but only means to the aims. We must make use of them today even if we know a hundred times that the later development can possibly lead to the opposite. There is no alliance that lasts forever. Happy the nations which, in consequence of the complete divergence of their interests, can enter into an alliance relationship for a definite time without being forced to a mutual conflict after the cessation of the same.
But a weak State especially, which wants to achieve power and greatness, must always try to take an active part in the general political events of world history.
When Prussia entered her Silesian War, this too was a relatively secondary phenomenon alongside the violent dispute between England and France, which at that time was already in full swing. Perhaps Frederick The Great can be reproached for having pulled English chestnuts out of the fire. But would the Prussia ever have arisen with which a Bismarck could create a new Reich, if at that time a Hohenzollern prince had sat on the throne who, in the knowledge of the future greater evens of world history, preserved his Prussia in a State of pious neutrality? The three Silesian Wars brought Prussia more than Silesia. On these battlefields grew those Regiments which in the future were to carry the German banners from Weissenburg and Worth up to Sedan, in order finally to greet the new emperor of the new Reich in the Hall Of Mirrors in the Palace Of Versailles.
Prussia at that time was certainly a small State, unimportant in population and territorial size. But by leaping into the middle of the great actions of world history, this little State had obtained for itself a legitimisation for the founding of the later German Reich.
And once, even the neutralists triumphed in the Prussian State. This was in the period of Napoleon I. At that time it was believed at first that Prussia could remain neutral, and for this she was later punished with the most terrible defeat. Both conceptions confronted one another sharply even in the year 1812. The one for neutrality, and the other, headed by Baron vom Stein, for intervention. The fact that the neutralists won out in 1812 cost Prussia and Germany infinite blood and brought them infinite suffering. And the fact that at last in 1813 the interventionists broke through saved Prussia.
The World War gave the clearest answer to the opinion that one can achieve political success by preserving a careful neutrality as a third power. What have the neutrals of the World War achieved practically? Were they the laughing third one, for instance? Or does one believe that, in a similar event, Germany would play another role?
And let no one think that the reason for this lies only in the magnitude of the World War. No, in the future, all wars, insofar as they involve great nations, will be Folk’s wars of the most gigantic dimensions. As a neutral State in any other European conflict, Germany, however, would possess no more importance than Holland or Switzerland or Denmark, and so on, in the World War. Does one really think that after the event we would get out of nowhere the strength to play the role against the remaining victor which we did not venture to play in a union with one of the two combatants?
At any rate, the World War has proven one thing explicitly: whoever conducts himself as a neutral in great world historical conflicts, may perhaps at first make a little business, but, in terms of power politics, he will thereby ultimately also be excluded from a codetermination of the world’s fate.
Thus, had the American Union preserved her neutrality in the World War, today she would be regarded as a power of the second rank, regardless of whether England or Germany had emerged as a victor. By entering the War, she raised herself to England’s naval strength, but in international political terms marked herself as a power of decisive importance. Since her entry into the World War the American Union is appraised in a completely different way. It lies in the nature of mankind’s forgetfulness no longer to know [to forget], after only a short time, what the general judgement of a situation had been only a few years before. Just as today we detect a complete disregard of Germany’s former greatness in the speeches of many foreign statesmen, just as little, conversely, can we appraise the extent of the increase in value that the American Union has experienced in our judgement since her entry into the World War.
This is also the most compelling statesmanlike justification for Italy’s entry into the War against her former allies. Had Italy not taken this step, she would now share the role of Spain, no matter how the dice had rolled.
The fact that she carried out the much criticised step to an active participation in the World War brought a rise in her position and a strengthening of the same which has found its ultimate crowning expression in Fascism.
