The Confessions of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. And the Life of Frederick the Great
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| The Confessions of Frederick the Great |
I may now turn to the white side of his shield, and I turn with pleasure, for Frederick the Great was truly great — perhaps it would not be too much to say that no one has ever better deserved to be the national hero.
For Prussia would have disappeared from the face of Europe if it had not been for his invincible soul, instead of being blessed with a vastly increased population and territory, and, when he had made her position secure on the battle-field, he showed equal abihty and resolution in rehabilitating commerce and agriculture in his ruined kingdom, which, after all his wars, he left free from debt. Nor does the total number of Prussian soldiers killed during his reign (180,000) contrast unfavourably with the losses of his descendant's armies in three months of the present war.
Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great, was Prussia's king from 1740 to 1786. By winning wars and expanding territories, he established Prussia as a strong military power.
The origin of the gospel of inhumanity preached by von Bernhardi in his Germany and the Next War is to be found in the Confessions of Frederick the Great, which came into my hands accidentally a short time ago.
The Rev. Graham McElroy, whom I met at a friend's house, who had noticed the resemblance, lent me an eighteenth-century duodecimo containing an English translation of the first five " Mornings" of the Confessions, which up till then were unknown to me. And about the same time, the editor of The Globe showed me the proof of an article which he had commissioned upon this book.
It was a learned and intuitive paper, and a perusal of it and the book made me explore the subject at the British Museum. There I found the other two "Mornings," in another little eighteenth-century volume in their original French, and one of them, the highly important "Morning" which deals with Finance, had apparently never been translated into English on account of its banality.
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