that of feebleness is the most abominable and despicable:  it is the sin against the Holy Spirit of Politics.’  This may seem the mere worship of might, and it is in effect nothing else than the mere worship of might; but we should misrepresent Treitschke if we did not add that power is not conceived by him as mere or bare power.  The power of the state is precious and ultimate because the state is a vehicle of culture:  the armed sword of the German state is precious because that state is the colporteur of German culture.  And thus Treitschke holds that Machiavelli, the great apostle of might, is only wrong in so far as he failed to see that might must justify itself by having a content, that is to say, by being used to spread the highest moral culture.  It is naturally assumed by German nationalists that this is German culture.

Two results flow from this philosophy, one negative, the other positive.  The negative result is the repudiation of any idea of the final character of international obligation; the other is the praise of the glory of war.

Salus populi suprema lex; and to it all international ‘law’ so called must bend.  The absolute sovereignty of the state is necessary for its absolute power; and that absolute sovereignty cannot be bound by any obligation, even of its own making.  Every treaty or promise made by a state, Treitschke holds, is to be understood as limited by the proviso rebus sic stantibus.  ’A state cannot bind its will for the future over against other states.’  International treaties are no absolute limitation, but a voluntary self-limitation of the state, and only for such time as the state may find to be convenient.  The state has no judge set over it, and any ‘legal’ obligation it may incur is in the last resort subject to its own decision—­in other words, to its own repudiation.[180] That the end justifies the means (in other words, that the maintenance of the German Empire as it stands justifies the violation of an international obligation) ‘has a certain truth’.  ’It is ridiculous to advise a state which is in competition with other states to start by taking the catechism into its hands.’  All these hints of his master were adopted and expanded by Bernhardi, the faithful disciple of Treitschke, whose Berlin lectures were attended in the last quarter of the nineteenth century by soldiers and officials as well as by students.  There is no such thing, Bernhardi feels, as universal international law.  ’Each nation evolves its own conception of Right (Recht):  none can say that one nation has a better conception than another.’  ’No self-respecting nation would sacrifice its own conception of Right’ to any international rule:  ’by so doing it would renounce its own highest ideals.’  The ardent nationalism which will reject foreign words and foreign wares will reject international law as something ‘foreign’.  Again, Bernhardi makes play with the proviso rebus sic stantibus; and this, curiously enough, he does in reference to Belgium.  Things are altered in Belgium, and therefore the plighted word of Germany may no longer be binding.  ’When Belgium was proclaimed neutral, no one contemplated that she would lay claim to a large and valuable region of Africa.  It may well be asked whether the acquisition of such territory is not ipso facto a breach of neutrality.’[181]