State Is above the Moral Law 341 



re- 



and peoples consider as sacred, everything which 

 sponds to their superior instinct of justice. ^ 



And General von Bernhardi repeats the same 

 idea, in a quotation from von Treitschke: 



" The individual must sacrifice himself for the higher 

 community of which he is a part, but the state is the 

 highest conception in the wider community of man 

 and therefore the duty of self-annihilation does not 

 enter into the case."^ 



These quotations could be multiplied by a score, 

 all of them showing that action in accordance 

 with justice, that is to say with morality, appears 

 to be contrary to self-interest. Since a sacrifice 

 is made in acting in accordance with morality, 

 since justice is opposed to self-interest, men prefer 

 not to sacrifice themselves, and when a choice 

 must be made they prefer to abandon morality 

 in order to follow their own self-interests. And 

 when we come to international relations, morality 

 is not considered to be applicable because in these 

 relations the safety of the State and the interest of 

 the people for whom the statesman is acting as 

 guardian, must take precedence over everything 

 else. From this point of view then, it becomes the 

 highest duty of a statesman to act in an immoral 

 fashion, because only in this way can he serve the 



' Les documents du progrh, September, 1910, p. 193. 

 » Treitschke, Politik, vol. i., § 3, quoted by Bernhardi in 

 Germany and the Next War, Powles' translation, 4th ed., p. 46. 



