Page:Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche (1921).djvu/12

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viii

PREFACE

that nowhere was pre-war Germany more fiercely denounced than in the writings of this German (who was, by the way, half a Pole), and who was, in fact, the first

good European.

The anti-Prussian, anti-German, anti-nationalistic current runs throughout the whole of Nietzsche's correspondence. At the height of Germany's victory in 1870 Nietzsche wrote from Bâle (Nov. 7, 1870):

"As regards the conditions of culture in the immediate future I feel the deepest misgivings. If only we are not forced to pay too dearly for this huge national success in a quarter where I at least refuse to suffer any loss. Between ourselves: I regard the Prussia of to-day as a power full of the greatest danger for culture."

Nietzsche never wavered in his deep distrust and his fierce denial of Imperial Germany; when near the end of his spiritual life we still find him writing from Nice under date of February 24, 1887:

"German politics are only another form of permanent winter and bad weather. It seems to me that Germany for the last 15 years has become a regular school of besotment. Water, rubbish and filth, far and wide—that is what it looks like from a distance. I beg a thousand pardons, if I have hurt your nobler feelings by stating this, but for me present-day Germany, however much it may bristle, hedgehog-like with arms, I have no longer any respect. It represents the stupidest, most depraved and most mendacious form of the German spirit that has ever existed. I forgive no one for compromising with it in any way, even if his name be Richard Wagner," etc.

And this is the man who is said to have incited his countrymen to another war of conquest!

But truth will out, even in literature. It does come out in this correspondence, which, it may be safely predicted, will mark the end of the "moral" crusade against one of the world's purest spirits. It will further-

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