Munich
in the whole nation’s struggle with Destiny.
In any case they had no business to watch idly while Germanity was driven back year by year; the value of Austria’s alliance after all depended wholly on the preservation of the German element.
But they did not go in that direction at all. They feared the struggle above everything, only to be forced into it finally at the least propitious moment. They hoped to flee Fate, and were overtaken by it. They dreamed of preserving world peace, and ended up in a World War.
And here was the chief reason why the third way of shaping a German future was not even considered. They knew that the acquisition of new territory could be accomplished only in the East; they saw the battle that would be necessary, and they wanted peace at any price. The watchword of German foreign policy had long since changed from “Preservation of the German nation by every means” to “Preservation of world peace by any means.” How they succeeded, everyone knows.
I shall have more to say on that subject later.
There remained the fourth possibility: industry and world trade, sea power and colonies.
At the beginning this development was, in fact, easier and quicker to achieve. The colonization of territory is a slow process, often lasting for centuries; indeed its real inner strength consists in the fact that it is not a sudden flaring up, but a sound and steady though slow growth, in contrast with industrial development, which can be inflated in the course of a few years, but which will then be more like a soap-bubble, than any kind of solid strength. It is quicker work building a navy than fighting doggedly to build farms and settle them with farmers; but the navy is also the more quickly destroyed of the two.
When Germany nevertheless chose that road, she had at least to realize clearly that even this development would end in battle some day. Only children could expect by pleasant and mannerly behavior and constant emphasis upon peaceful intentions to get their “bananas” in the “peaceful competition of nations” about
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