Theos-Talk Archives (November 2003 Message tt00130)

Leadbeater on Blavatsky and Bismarck

C.W. Leadbeater wrote:

.............................
It was hoped that the other nations which belong to our sub-race 
would join in a great Confederation. America and England have been 
drawn closely together, so that war between them is now scarcely 
thinkable; and the hope was that Scandinavia and Germany would have 
come into a similar friendship; but Germany would not come in. There 
has been for many years a curious and undesirable form of national 
spirit arising in that country. There is plenty of literature on the 
subject. Read the German literature, and you will see perfectly well 
the direction in which for forty years and more its people have been 
going. Because of their intense pride, because of the teaching of 
brutality and of force, of blood and iron instead of the law of love, 
they have laid themselves open to this dreadful obsession, and some 
of the great Lords of the Dark Face have again taken their place 
among them.

Prince Bismarck was such an one, as Madame Blavatsky told us long 
ago. While he was still alive he laid his plans for the subjugation 
of Europe. You may be thankful he has not survived till the present, 
for his plans were far wiser than those of the men who have followed 
him. Long ago Madame Blavatsky explained to us that he had 
considerable occult knowledge, and that before the war with France, 
in 1870, he had traveled physically to certain points to the north, 
the south, the east and the west of France, and had there cast spells 
of some sort; or made magnetic centres, with the object of preventing 
effective resistance to the German armies. Undoubtedly the French 
collapse at the time was so complete and unexpected that it seemed to 
need some unusual explanation. 

In the course of the work of the invisible helpers on the battle-
field I have several times encountered and spoken to the Prince, who 
naturally watches with the keenest interest all that happens; and 
some months ago I had an interesting conversation with him. Speaking 
of the War, he said that if we were servants of the Hierarchy and 
students of Occultism, we must know that Germany was in the right. 
One of our party, becoming somewhat indignant, replied that all the 
rest of the world was willing to be at peace, that Germany had made 
an unprovoked attack, and had caused all this awful carnage, and was 
therefore entirely in the wrong. But the Prince said:

" No no; you do not understand. This is a struggle which had to come
—
a struggle between the forces of law, and order, science and 
culture, on the one hand, and on the other, those of disorder and 
licence, and the degrading tendencies of democracy.

We maintained that we also loved law and order, science and culture, 
but we wished along with them to have liberty and progress. The 
Prince would have none of such ideas; he declared that democracy 
cared nothing for culture, but wished to drag everybody down to a 
common level, and that the lowest; that it desired law to rob and 
restrain the rich, but itself would obey no law ; that it had no 
conception of liberty under law, (which is the only true liberty) but 
desired a triumph of utter lawlessness, in which selfish might should 
rule, and only those should be restrained who wished to live and work 
as free men. Further, he said that if we ourselves served the true 
inner Government of the world, we must know that it is the very 
opposite of all democratic theories, and that therefore it is 
Germany, and not England, who is fighting for the ideals of the 
hierarchical Government. 

" Which," he asked, " is nearer to the true ideal of a King — our 
Kaiser, who holds his power from GOD alone, or your King George, who 
can strike out no line of his own, whose every action is limited by 
his ministers and his parliament, so that he can do no real good ? 
And the French President — what is he but the scum momentarily
thrown 
to the top of a boiling mass of corruption ?" 

We were most indignant at such an insult to our brave Allies, but we 
could not but admit that there was a modicum of truth in some of his 
remarks. We tried to tell him that, though we shared his utter 
disbelief in the methods of democracy, we thought it a necessary 
intermediate stage through which the world had to pass on its way to 
a nobler freedom, because a scheme (however good) which was forced 
upon a people could never lead to its ultimate evolution; but that 
men must learn to choose the good for themselves with open eyes, to 
renounce their brutal selfishness, not because they were driven to do 
so at the point of the sword, but because they themselves had learnt 
to see the higher way and the necessity that each should control 
himself for the good of all. 

The Prince was absolutely unconvinced; he said that our plan was 
Utopian, and that we could never bring the canaille to understand 
such considerations — that the only way to deal with them was the 
method of blood and iron, forcing them for their own ultimate good 
(and meantime for our convenience) into the life which we who were 
wiser saw to be best for them.

Quoted from:
THE GREAT WAR
by C W Leadbeater
First published in The Theosophist, February 1916
http://www.theosophical.ca/TheGreatWar.htm