War & Peace Quote by Bernhard von Bulow

"Unparalleled heroism" is doing the dirty work here: it sanctifies a geopolitical demand by laundering it through sacrifice. Bulow isn’t simply praising Germans; he’s establishing a moral credit line. If a nation has bled at "fearful" cost against "half the world", then any subsequent claim - especially an expensive, provocative naval build-up - becomes not ambition but repayment.

The phrasing is calibrated to recast Germany’s strategic predicament as an ethical imbalance. "Half the world" inflates the sense of encirclement and turns other powers into a faceless mass, a rhetorical move that swaps responsibility for victimhood. The war is framed as forced upon a courageous people, so maritime power becomes self-defense, not escalation. That’s the key subtext: the sea is where Germany’s security and prestige will be won, but Bulow needs the public (and parliament) to treat dreadnoughts as necessities rather than toys of Weltpolitik.

Context matters: Bulow was a chief architect of Wilhelmine Germany’s push for "a place in the sun", and naval expansion was the signature instrument. In an era when Britain’s dominance hinged on the Royal Navy, declaring a German "right" to "safety... at sea" is a polite way of saying Germany intends to contest the rules of the imperial system. The coupling of "right and duty" is especially revealing: it collapses debate. To disagree is to betray the fallen. Bulow’s sentence turns maritime rivalry into a civic obligation, weaponizing memory before the bodies are even buried.