LAND AND WATER. 
October 23, 1915. 
THE INFLUENCE OF PRUSSIA. 
By L, March Phillipps. 
MON'G tlie tyrannies we are Hgiiting, Cer- 
many, we must remember, is par cxcelU'iuc 
the tliinking tyrant. 
A the tliinking tyrant. It is her pre-eminence 
in this direction which has given lier her 
ascendency over her Alhes. 
Turkey and Austria, by bhnd instinct or by a 
governing tradition wliich has become second nature, 
are equally pledged to the autocratic principle, but it 
has never occurred to either of them to justify tliat prin- 
ciple furnially as a philosophy of life, to think out, as 
it were, the etiiics of tyranny. Turkish tyranny is 
simply the tyranny of barbarism. Turkey has got stuck 
in tliat stage of development, thanks to her adoption of 
the Moslem faith, for it may be remarked as a curious 
fact that no people wlio have once passed under the spell 
of the greatest autocratic religion of the world have ever 
issued from the barbaric phase, or ever attained tiie 
intellectual and spiritual ideas of a genuine civilisation. 
Austrian tyranny, on the other hand, is no more than 
tlie tyranny of expediency, the resort to which a Govern- 
ment is driven which, placed in the diflRcult position of 
having to reconcile many conflicting racial claims and 
possessing no constructive ideal to put in practice, re- 
lapses into the habit of using the stronger elements of 
the community to police the weaker, and thus out of 
internal oppression and discord evolves some appearance 
of outward order and a superficial unit}'. 
Neither of these examples of autocracy in being 
possesses the sliglitest intellectual interest. Neither of 
them is in any sense a gospel, a theory, a pliilosophv. 
Neither of them reasons or thinks. From neither of 
them can any answer, good or bad, to the cjuestion how 
to govern be derived. Germany stands on a different 
footing. .She is destined to dominate and absorb, and is 
indeed at the present moment visibly absorbing, her 
more ignorant and vacillating Allies, simply because 
she can supply them wiit\ a reasoned theorv of action. 
.All nations need such a theory, failing which their policv 
and conduct become a mere inconsequent and inco- 
herent babbling without a purpose or an end, but neither 
(Turkey nor .\ustria could supply such a theory for them- 
selves. It was Germany who met the demand. 
German thinkers, German philosophers and profes- 
sors set themselves to construct an intellectual system 
vindicating and, indeed, glorifying tlie instinct of 
dominalion and the claim of might to be its own justifica- 
tion. The steps and degrees by which the svstem was 
elaborated need not here concern us. Much has been 
written about it. The reader is aware of the part 
E laved by German thought in the hands of men like 
lelbriick the professor, Treitschke the historian, 
Liliencron the poet, Nietzsche the philosopher, \'on 
Bernhardi the soldier. He is aware, too, of the sudden 
change in the current of that thought and of the curious 
unanmiity with which a united Germanv, once it h-id 
received the impress of the Prussian ascendencv set it 
self to Idealise the very forces it had hitherto repudiated. 
From I lege , Herder, Lessing. Kant, and Goetiie to the 
names we have just mentioned, what a step' The 
Prussian mfluence in the mateiial sphere is natural and 
explicable, but more striking still has its effect been in 
he jntellectual sphere. Nevertheless bv these means 
the Prussian gospel of might ^^as elaborated w"s 
wrought into a reasoned philosophv. And it is as the 
result of this operation that her unthinking Allies hantr 
transaction, the help g,ven bv a stronger n.^ver Bur 
et us not forget that Germany herself owes her s en^ 
to her confidence in her own philosophv. Gernnm ' 
behef that s . e has thotight the wltole thing ot.^ he t ,st 
•n her own kultur. her own theory of rule And stalecrSl 
18 
is not onlv the secret of her .Allies' belief in her, b'ut li 
the secret also of lier belief in herself. 
Individual View. 
Of the philosophy of might thus emanating out of 
Prussia, absorbing Germany, and dominating thes 
alliance I have one remark to make. We see the 
Prussian theorv, as it were, from the outside, as a force 
which affects the world. Its threatening and aggressive 
aspect is, therefore, that which immediately strikes us. 
But seen from the inside, not self-assertion but self-sacri- 
fice seems the keynote of it. The German citizen does 
not argue out tlic final result, or concern liimself with the 
fact that individual acts of self-sacrifice may in th? 
aggregate, collected into a national policy, amount to a 
prodigious act of tyranny and self-assertion. 
This, it is quite safe to say, is the position of the 
average Clerman citizen soldier who to-day is giving up 
his life for his I'atherland. He does not see, it never 
occurs to him that the power which calls for such sacrifice 
may itself be unworthy, that to turn the .State into a 
moral law and the welfare of the State into a final justi- 
fication of conduct is to prostitute the spiritual sense to 
a material purpose. 
To view it thus helps us, I think, to grasp the pre- 
sent situation, and especially to understand the influence 
which Germany is exerting. The Prussian theorv, that 
the State is absolute and that armed might is the natural 
mode of development and progress, has emanated from 
a set of circumstances peculiar to Prussia herself. It 
was tiie intellectual justification of conditions which had 
been long in existence. It is needless to point out liuw 
adapted the history of Prussia has been to a growth of 
this kind. This corner of Europe, bleak and desolate, 
appears to have been set aside, with its grim Ilohen- 
zollern dynasty, to work out slowly in practice and tlien 
enunciate as a philosophy a theory of governing having 
absolutism for its end. 
A Tyrant Philosophy. 
For generations — nay, for centuries — the practical 
work of running a State on these lines was carried on. 
Through all changes and revolutions in luirope Prussia 
stood lirm for despotism. Constitutional ideas, else- 
where progressing, broke on her frontiers in vain. All 
other tl'.rones miglit totter, but the Hohenzollern 
dynasty stood like a rock. And now, in our time, 
Prussia preaciies what she has so long practised. She, 
the tyrant State of Europe, out of her long experience 
and exercise in that kind of government, produces for 
the world's consideration a tyrant philosophv. I do not 
believe we at all understand as vet the significance of 
that event. To do so we should have to realise the 
depths to which the cause of reaction in Europe had 
sunk, precisely owing to the fact that it possessed no 
intellectual backbone or framework of reason to sujjport 
It. Since I-rance, after manv vacillations, declared for 
freedom and a constitutional government, tlie idea of 
absolutism in any shape or form became intellectuallv 
untenable, lyranny was thought of as svnonMuous 
wjth stupidity. So much was this the case, so fuflv was 
liberty felt to imply the dawn of a new light and tvrannv 
tlie smlcing back into the old darkness, that the words 
progressive and reactionary became the common terms 
to divide the two parties. A more fatal state of tliin<rs 
from the point of view of tyrannv could not be imaoined. 
Almost any form of cleverness can be made .somethin<r 
ot. but no one has any use for a fool. Since Italv and 
Trance joined England on the Constitutional side to 
