chapter13 GERMAN GOALS
We cannot examine Germany's foreign policy possibilities without first possessing clarity on what we want in Germany itself, that is, on how Germany itself thinks to shape her future. Further, we must then try to determine clearly the foreign policy goals of those powers in Europe which, as members of the coalition of victors, are important as world powers. I have already dealt with Germany's various foreign policy possibilities in this book. Nevertheless, I shall once more briefly present the possible foreign policy goals so that they may yield a basis for the critical examination of the relations of these individual foreign policy aims to those of other European States. 1) Germany can renounce setting a foreign policy goal altogether. This means that, in reality, she can decide for anything and need be committed to nothing at all. Thus in the future she will continue the policy of the last thirty years, but under other conditions. If now the world consisted just of States with a similar political aimlessness, Germany could at least endure this even though it could hardly be justified. But this is not at all the case. Thus, just as in ordinary life a man with a fixed life goal that he tries to achieve at all events will always be superior to others who live aimlessly, exactly likewise is it in the life of nations. But, above all, this is far from saying that a State without a political goal is in the position to avoid dangers which such a goal may bring in its train. For just as it seems exempt from an active function, in consequence of its own political aimlessness, in its very passiveness it can also just as easily become the victim of the political aims of others. For the action of a State is not only determined by its own will, but also by that of others, with the sole difference that in one case it itself can determine the law of action, whereas in the other case the latter is forced upon it. Not to want a war because of a peaceful sentiment, is far from saying that it can also be avoided. And to avoid a war at any price is far from signifying saving life in the face of death. Germany's situation in Europe today is such that she is far from allowing herself to hope that she may go forward to a condition of contemplative peace with her own political aimlessness. No such possibility exists for a nation located in the heart of Europe. Either Germany itself tries actively to take part in the shaping of life, or she will be a passive object of the lifeshaping activity of other nations. All the sagacity hitherto supposedly able to extricate nations from historical dangers through declarations of a general disinterest has, up to now, always shown itself to be an error as cowardly as it is stupid. Whoever will not be a hammer in history, will be an anvil. In all its development up to now, our German Folk has had a choice only between these two possibilities. When it itself wanted to make history, and accordingly joyfully and boldly staked all, then it was still the hammer. When it believed that it could renounce the obligations of the struggle for existence, it remained, up to now, the anvil on which others fought out their struggle for existence, or it itself served the alien world as nutriment. Hence, if Germany wants to live, she must take the defence of this life upon herself, and even here the best parry is a thrust. Indeed, Germany may not hope at all that she can still do something for shaping her own life, if she does not make a strong effort to set a clear foreign policy aim which seems suitable for bringing the German struggle for existence into an intelligent relation to the interests of other nations.