116 PROF. D. S. MARGOLIOUTH, D.LITT., OS THE INFLUENCE OF 



hopes Holland may at some time or other again become German. 

 Clearly here as elsewhere Treitschke is speaking not as a 

 political philosopher, who aims at the enucleation of general 

 principles, but as a politician, whose business it is to defend the 

 action which his government for the time wishes to be defended. 



Some years after Treitschke's death his lectures on politics 

 were collected and published. Attempts have been made to 

 show that these lectures, which, owing to their author's great 

 powers as a speaker, were very well attended daring his lifetime, 

 contain immoral doctrines. It is from this work that Dr. Smith 

 quotes the maxim that treaties are made with the tacit under- 

 standing that they are only to be observed rigidly rebus sic 

 stantibus, while the conditions under which they were made 

 remain unchanged. It is worthy of note that precisely this 

 doctrine is asserted by Bismarck in his Personal Reminiscences. 

 The context wherein Treitschke formulates the principle has 

 reference to the case wherein humiliating conditions have been 

 imposed by one nation on a defeated foe ; and it is urged that a 

 treaty containing; such conditions should be denounced bv the 

 latter so soon as he finds himself strong enough to do so. 

 Treitschke, who so earnestly demanded the annexation of Alsace 

 and Lorraine, urges in his lectures the undesirability of enforcing 

 humiliating conditions on the conquered ; and recommends the 

 maintenance of strict good faith on the part of a State in inter- 

 national dealings with a view to inspiring confidence. It seems, 

 then, very doubtful whether his authority can be quoted for the 

 treatment of state contracts as scraps of paper. To denounce a 

 treaty is not the same as to violate it. 



On the whole it would not be easy for an impartial reader of 

 this treatise to condemn it as seriously immoral or likely to 

 corrupt the hearer, though complete agreement with all the 

 propositions which it contains might not be expected from those 

 whose patriotism attaches them to some other constitution than 

 that of Imperial Germany. Treitschke is an admirer of Hohen- 

 zollern absolutism, and ridicules the limited monarchy of Britain : 

 an English lecturer on politics would probably take the converse 

 view. He is an admirer of the great as opposed to the small 

 state on a variety of grounds ; a Swiss or Dutch lecturer might 

 think otherwise. He vehemently attacks the British theory of 

 maritime law, but ascribes this to no inborn wickedness on the 

 part of the British ; the Germans, he admits, would in the like 

 circumstances have adopted a similar line. He is a believer in 

 the need of colonies for a really great empire, and holds that such 

 a colonial empire can only be maintained by the aid of a fleet. 



