No More Learning

It
may rely upon the consent of the huge majority
of the German nation. Since the repugnant
spectacle of the Servian War, an alarming con-
fusion of ideas seems to be spreading in our Press ;
only the Government-inspired papers and a few
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? 90 Germany and the East
respectable Liberal organs in Berlin, in Suabia,
and the towns of the Hansa still preserve impartial
judgment. This complete ignorance of the Euro-
pean balance of power, which from olden times
was a special peculiarity of German Radicalism,
is again revealed in the senseless phraseology
of Berlin democratic journals; the Press of the
Ultramontanes preaches wild hatred against
schismatic Russia, the tamer of Catholic Poland,
and unfortunately many Liberal papers also chime
in this party-biassed chorus, as, for instance, the
Koelnische and the Augsburger Allgemeine, the two
papers most read abroad. Not to wish to forget
anything is a bad habit of the German mind which
seems closely allied with the highest power of our
nature, namely, our fate. Even as we of the Pro-
gressive party number a few members who live
on old recollections and ancient resentment, so
there is amongst our publicists many a well-
meaning man who in a totally changed situation of
the world adheres to the fear of Russia of 1854.
Luckily, however, the Press is not public opinion.
The German nation does not love the Slavs. It
also knows how intensely we are hated by a con-
siderable part of our Eastern neighbours, and
nevertheless it thinks sufficiently Hberally and
justly not to grudge the Slavs their good right to
form national States. It has made sufficient ac-
quaintance in its own struggles for unity with the
narrow-minded reactionary tendency of present-
day England, and no more allows itself to be
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? Germany and the East 91
deceived by stale panegyrics about British liberty ;
it understands very well that we should to-day
have had to fight a world war had the Empire
listened to the foolish councils of the Anglomanes.
No doubt is entertained any more as to the true
spirit of the German people since the brilliant
success of the Chancellor's speech; the impression
of those simple words was so powerful that not
even the member for "Meppen" dared contradict,
and even some Radical papers showed half-
hearted approval. Thus, supported by the will of
the nation, the German Crown can look forward
with some calmness to the next acts of the Oriental
drama. The temperate assurances of the Peters-
burg Court would -- such is the way of the world
-- mean little if Russia could expect to carry its
standards in quick triumphal march right before
the walls of Stamboul. Such an easy victory
of Russian arms is, however, by no means pro-
bable. It is true that long ago the catchword of
the "colossus with feet of clay" became a quite
exploded idea; the Czar's Empire commands a
mighty power whose efficiency has also increased
considerably; the railway net has within fifteen
years extended from 500 to over 7000 versts; the
bitter lessons of the last Oriental war have been
taken to heart, and the fortresses of the Balkans
no longer seem impregnable to modern artillery.
But the enormous obstacles which this dreary,
unhealthy country, poor in roads, has at all times
placed in the way of advancing armies are still
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? 92 Germany and the East
the same to-day. Turkey commands to-day the
Pontus, which was closed to her in 1828, and a
brave, well- trained army, which will gladly fight
for the Holy Islam cause against her old sworn
enemy. The issue of the campaign seems very
uncertain, and the Courts at Vienna and Berlin
will hardly have the opportunity to speak a
momentous word at the right moment should the
enthusiasm of victory arouse the arrogance of
Pan- Slavism.
Every war baffles foresight. It is of course con-
ceivable that the moral anguish of "English com-
mercial policy" will, after all, delight the world
with a fresh " Opium War, " and that the Moham-
medan cavalry of the Empress of India, accom-
panied by the blessings of pious clergymen, will
fight for the Christian Half-Moon. For the time
being, however, it looks as if the fateful question
of Oriental politics, the future of Constantinople,
is not to be decided this time. The Turkish War is
for Russia an enormous risk. No European knows
what is going on in the minds of the 8,000,000
Mohammedan subjects of the White Czar, how
much the word of the Sheik Islam and the prestige
of the Caliph are still worth amongst those masses,
and what consequences an explosion of the fanatic-
ism of Allah's warriors may have for Russia
as well as for England's East Indian dominions.
Even as the Crimean War brought about a decisive
social upheaval in Russia, a long new Oriental
War may easily incite the highly dangerous powers
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? Germany and the East 93
of Radical Nihilism fermenting in the half-trained
Muscovite mind to a savage struggle -- not to men-
tion the uneducated Polish nobility. Many are
the sore spots of the Czar's Empire. The Em-
peror's as yet incomplete great work of reform
needs peace, and the balance in the State Budget
which is hardly re-established, would infallibly
be lost in a long war. As a matter of fact, the
moderate extent of Russian war preparations does
not point to the intention of dealing a blow at the
heart of Ottoman Power. Perhaps the country
is at present not able to use more than 200,000
men for warfare abroad, and, anyhow, it will have
to be admitted in St. Petersburg that such an
army has to-day little chance to reach the town
of the Comneni from the Pruth.
Unready and unripe conditions meet us every-
where in the lands of the Mediterranean. The
Mediterranean world is aiHng from two great
evils: the naval supremacy of England and the
irretrievable rottenness of the Ottoman Empire.
But the young Powers which can oust these
decrepit Powers are nevertheless in being. The
Greek people, who by origin and position seem
called upon to take the best part of the legacy of
the "Sick Man," have badly neglected their war
preparations. If the Rumanians may expect, with
some justification, to gain complete independence
through the Russian Alliance, Greece in the best of
cases may only expect to move her frontiers a
little farther towards the North. Still worse
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? 94 Germany and the East
conditions prevail in the West. But if the country
in the centre of the Mediterranean which possesses
the most magnificent harbours of the South, and
which still dominates with its language the trade
of the Levant -- if Italy, formerly mighty at
sea, again grows conscious of her tasks in the
world's history -- the strange conditions in the
Mediterranean will again develop in a free and
natural manner, and nobody can desire this great
change more sincerely than we Germans, as fate-
companions of the Italians. Napoleon said the
first condition of the existence of Italy as an empire
is for her to become a naval Power. But not even
the sad event of Lissa has decided the Italians to
reform their fleet on a big scale; the ambition of
Roman statesmen at the utmost rises to the
question as to whether with the collapse of the
Turkish Empire Tunis could perhaps be conquered.
In this way, the situation in the South seems in all
directions unprepared for a great decision. We
must expect that the present crisis will only break
a few more stones out of the rickety structure of
the Turkish Empire without actually destroying
the building.
Whichever way the die may be cast, we Ger-
mans do not swim against the stream of history.
The principle of intervention has become dis-
credited since the Holy Alliance wantonly misused
it; properly applied, however, it maintains its
value in a society which is conscious of its entirety.
Turkey has trampled on all the solemn promises
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? Germany and the East 95
which granted her the entrance into our State-
confederation. Christian Europe must not have
the right wrested from her to at least gag this
barbaric Power if as yet it cannot be destroyed, so
that it may no more endanger the human rights of
Christian subjects.
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? WHAT WE DEMAND FROM FRANCE
WHEREVER Germans live, as far as the re-
mote colonies beyond the seas, the flags
are flying from every window, and the clanging
of bells and the thunder of cannon are pro-
claiming victory after victory. All of us know
that after three more frightful struggles -- at
Metz, at Strassburg, at Paris -- the war will
be gloriously closed. To him who remembers
at this moment the bitter shame which we
have hidden in our hearts for so many years
since the day of Olmutz, it must often appear
as if all this were a dream. The nation cannot
rejoice in its victory with its whole heart. The
sacrifices which that victory demanded were too
frightful; but the stakes actually paid in the
bloody game, in which the flower of our German
youth was to perish in battle against Turcos
and mercenaries, are ludicrously unlike our
anticipations.
Out of our mourning for our fallen heroes rises
the fixed resolve that we Germans shall fight it out
to the very end. King William, who has so often
during these weeks spoken out the word that was in
all our hearts, has solemnly promised already that
96
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? What We Demand from France 97
the peace shall be worthy of our sacrifices. At
such a time the task of the political writer
is a very modest one. Only a dilettante can
take the trouble to draw out, in all their de-
tails, the heads of a peace the preliminary
conditions of which have not yet become visi-
ble to statesmen. We do not know in what
condition our troops, when they enter it, will
find the morally and politically wasted capital
of the enemy. We cannot calculate how long
it may be before the blind rage of the French
will soften into a temper which will enable us to
treat with them. We cannot even guess what
power will govern France after this monstrous
disloyalty of all parties, disgraceful alike to the
despot and the people. But one task remains
for our Press -- to bring out the unuttered and
half-formed hopes which move in every breast
into clear consciousness, so that, on the con-
clusion of peace, a firm and intelligent nation-
al pride may rise in enthusiasm behind our
statesmen. When Germany last dictated peace
in Paris, we had reason to lament bitterly
that the German diplomatists had no such
support.
The thought, however, which, after first knock-
ing timidly at our doors as a shamefaced wish,
has, in four swift weeks, grown to be the mighty
war-cry of the nation, is no other than this:
"Restore what you stole from us long ago; give
back Alsace and Lorraine. "
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? 98 What We Demand from France
I
WHAT WE DEMAND
Were I to marshal the reasons which make it our
duty to demand this, I should feel as if the task
had been set me to prove that the world is round.
What can be said on the subject was said after the
battle of Leipzig, in Ernst Moritz Amdt's glorious
tract, "The Rhine the German river, not the Ger-
man boundary"; said exhaustively, and beyond
contradiction, at the time of the Second Peace of
Paris, by all the considerable statesmen of non-
Austrian-Germany -- by Stein and Humboldt, by
Miinster and Gagem, by the two Crown Princes
of Wiirttemberg and Bavaria; and confirmed, since
that time, by the experience of two generations.
If a reckless, robber war like this is to cost that
frivolous people nothing more than a war indem-
nity, the cynical jesters, who worship chance
and fortune as the only governing powers among
the nations, and laugh at the rights of States as
a dream of kind-hearted ideologues, would be
proved to be in the right. The sense of justice
to Germany demands the lessening of France.
Every intelHgent man sees that that miHtary
nation cannot be forgiven, even for the economic
sacrifices of the war, on the payment of the heav-
iest indemnity in money. Why was it that, before
the declaration of the war, the anxious cry rang
through Alsace and Lorraine, "The dice are to
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? What We Demand from France 99
be thrown to settle the destiny of our provinces, **
before a single German newspaper had demanded
the restitution of the plunder? Because the
awakened conscience of the people felt what
penalty would have to be paid in the interests of
justice by the disturber of the peace of nations.
What is demanded by justice is, at the same
time, absolutely necessary for our security. Let
the reader glance at the map, and he will see in an
instant what a jest it was, what a bitter cynicism,
to fix such boundaries for Germany, after our
victorious arms had, twice over, given peace to the
world ! In the east, the triangle of strong fortresses
between Vistula and Narew cleaves like a dividing
wedge between Prussia and Silesia. In the west,
Strassburg is in the hands of France -- the beautiful
''pass into the Empire," as Henry II of France
enviously called it three hundred years ago. We
have seen, for some twenty years, how the whole
pontoon corps of the French lay in garrison in that
great gate opening on the Upper Rhine; and we
have watched them at their summer amusements,
throwing their bridges of boats over the Rhine as a
friendly preparation for the German war. The
railway bridge at Kehl, which is indispensable to
the commerce of the world, had to be blown up
at once after the declaration of war. The guns of
Fort Mortier look menacingly down on the open
town of Altbreisach, which fell a prey to them once
before. A little higher, at the Istein Rock, two
shots from a French outwork would break up the
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? loo What We Demand from France
railway between Freiburg and Upper Germany.
Such a boundary is intolerable to a proud nation;
it is a living memory of those days of German
impotence when the mournful inscription stood
over the Rhine gate at Altbreisach, "I was the
prison wall of the Frenchman; now I am his
gateway and his bridge. Alas, there will soon be
nothing to confine him left anywhere. "
At the time of the Second Peace of Paris the
Crown Prince of Wurttemberg warned us that if
Germany omitted to secure the German boundaries
on the Upper Rhine the instinct of self-preserva-
tion would, sooner or later, unite the Courts of
South Germany in a new Rhine Confederation.
Thanks to the growth of Prussia, and to the sound
patriotic sense of the Princes of Bavaria and
Baden, the prophecy has not literally come true;
but it was very far from an empty speech. The
danger of a new Confederation of the Rhine
threatened the unprotected South for fifty long
years. For fifty years have the people of South
Germany, oscillating between blind admiration
and passionate hatred, failed, on almost every
occasion, to maintain that proud reserve towards
their French neighbours which becomes a great
people, and which springs only from the conscious-
ness of assured strength. When our descendants
look back, out of their great Empire, on our
struggles, they will doubtless rejoice over the
unity of spirit we have shown ; but they will shrug
their shoulders and say. How unready and insecure
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? What We Demand from France loi
was the Germany of our fathers, which overflowed
with praise and rang with shouts of joy and aston-
ishment when the Bavarians and the Suabians, in
one inspired moment, fulfilled their confounded
duty to their great Fatherland !
Every State must seek the guarantees of its
security in itself alone. The silly fancy, that
gratitude and magnanimity could secure the
German countries against a defeated France, has,
twice over, been its own fearful punishment. What
German can read without rage the account of
those peace proceedings at Paris in which victor
and vanquished exchanged parts, and a respectful
attention was paid to all the prejudices of France,
while nobody thought of the feelings of Germany?
The fortress of Conde had to be left to the French
for the sake of its name; the conquerors thought
that it would be cruel to take away a stronghold
from France which had been named after a
great Bourbon general. What thanks did we get
for our magnanimity in 1814? The Hundred
Days and Waterloo. What gratitude for our
consideration in 18 15? A steadily growing politi-
cal demoralization, which gradually destroyed
every feeling of justice in France; a conviction
that not only was the Rhine country the property
of France, but that even those art treasures which
the conquerors of the world once took from Berlin
and Venice, from Rome and Danzig, belonged
of right to the capital of the whole world. If
the France of 181 5, which still possessed a great
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? 102 What We Demand from France
treasure of moral forces, fell back so soon on greedy
dreams of conquest, what have we to expect from
the society of the Second Empire, which has lost
all its faith in the ideal treasures of life in the
course of the barren party struggles of these many
years? The nation is our enemy, not this Bona-
parte, who rather obeyed than led it. For a long
time to come, the one idea which will inspire the
fallen State will be revenge for Worth and For-
bach, revenge for Mars and Gravelotte. For
the time, peaceful relations founded on mutual
confidence are impossible.
It is not sufficient for us now that we should
feel ourselves able to resist an attack from France
or even from a European alliance. Our nation in
arms cannot afford to send its sons forth at any
moment into such another steeplechase against its
greedy neighbour. Our military organization has
no meaning without secure boundaries.
The dis-
tracted world already foresees a whole brood of
wars springing out of the bloody seed of this.
We owe it some guarantee of permanent peace
among the nations, and we shall only give it, so far
as human strength can, when German guns frown
from the fortified passes of the Vosges on the
territories of the Gaulish race, when our armies
can sweep into the plains of Champagne in a
few days* march, when the teeth of the wild beast
are broken, and weakened France can no longer
venture to attack us. Even Wellington, the good
friend of the Bourbons, had to allow that France
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? What We Demand from France 103
was too strong for the peace of Europe ; and the
statesmen of the present day, whenever they have
reahzed the altered equiUbrium of the Powers,
will feel that the strengthening of the boundaries
of Germany contributes to the security of the peace
of the world. We are a peaceful nation. The
traditions of the Hohenzollems, the constitution
of our army, the long and difficult work before us
in the upbuilding of our united German State,
forbid the abuse of our warlike power. We need a
generation devoted to the works of peace to solve
the difficult but not impossible problem of the
unification of Germany, while France is driven into
all the delusions of a policy of adventure by the
false political ideas which are engrained in her
luxurious people, by the free-lance spirit of her
conscript soldiers, and the all but hopeless break-
up of her domestic life.
In view of our obligation to secure the peace of
the world, who will venture to object that the
people of Alsace and Lorraine do not want to
belong to us? The doctrine of the right of all the
branches of the German race to decide on their
own destinies, the plausible solution of demagogues
without a fatherland, shiver to pieces in presence
of the sacred necessity of these great days. These
territories are ours by the right of the sword,
and we shall dispose of them in virtue of a higher
right -- the right of the German nation which will
not permit its lost children to remain strangers to
the German Empire. We Germans, who know
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? 104 What We Demand from France
Germany and France, know better than these
unfortunates themselves what is good for the
people of Alsace, who have remained under the
misleading influence of their French connection
outside the sympathies of new Germany. Against
their will we shall restore them to their true
selves. We have seen with joyful wonder the
undying power of the moral forces of history,
manifested far too frequently in the immense
changes of these days, to place much confidence in
the value of a mere popular disinclination. The
spirit of a nation lays hold, not only of the genera-
tions which live beside it, but of those which
are before and behind it. We appeal from the
mistaken wishes of the men who are there to-day
to the wishes of those who were there before them.
We appeal to all those strong German men who
once stamped the seal of our German nature on
the language and manners, the art and the social
life of the Upper Rhine. Before the nineteenth
century closes the world will recognize that the
spirits of Erwin von Steinbach and Sebastian
Brandt are still alive, and that we were only obey-
ing the dictates of national honour when we made
little account of the preferences of the people who
live in Alsace to-day.
During the last two centuries, from the earliest
beginnings of the Prussian State, we have been
struggling to liberate the lost German lands from
foreign domination. It is not the object of this
national policy to force every strip of German soil
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? What We Demand from France 105
which we ever gave up in the days of our weakness,
back again into our new Empire. We see without
uneasiness our people in Switzerland developing
themselves in peace and freedom unconnected with
the German State. We do not count on the break-
ing up of Austria. We have no desire to interfere
with the separate life of that branch of the German
stock which has grown up in the Netherlands into a
small independent nation. But we cannot permit
a German people, thoroughly degraded and
debased, to serve against Germany, before our
eyes, as the vassal of a foreign Power. France
owes her predominance in Europe solely to our
having been broken into fragments, and to the
condition of the other German Powers, and her
influence is out of all proportion to the real force
of the GalHc nationality. Who would have ven-
tured in Luther's days to say that France would
ever be superior to the warlike Germany which
he knew? The blood of German nobles flowed in
torrents in the Huguenot wars of the French; a
German host, the host of Bemhard von Weimar,
was the solid centre round which the armies of
Louis XIV grew up ; it was in our own school that
the Gaul first learned to defeat us. Who can count
all the German commanders of the Bourbons, from
Bassenstein (Bassompierre) down to Marechal de
Saxe; all the gallant German regiments, Royal
Alsace, Royal Deux Ponts, Royal Allemand; all
the teeming hosts of warlike dependants whom
the treachery of German princes brought under the
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? io6 What We Demand from France
yoke of the foreigner? When those frightful
robberies began with the Revolution, which at last
made the determination to fight the French like
a passion in the blood of our peaceful people, and
the name of "Frenchman" a synonym in North
Germany for "enemy," there were thousands of
Germans still fighting under that enemy's banner.
Ney and Kellermann, Lefebvre, Rapp, and Kleber
were counted among the bravest of the brave.
Even in this war, the best soldiers in the army of
France are the sturdy German stock of the people
of Alsace and Lorraine, and the genuine Celtic
race of Bretagne.
When Alsace fell under the dominion of the
French, our Empire lay powerless on the ground.
The fire of the German spirit, which had once
flamed through the whole world, seemed extin-
guished. Germany bowed herself before the
conquering policy and the victorious culture of
France. Even so, the French spirit has been
unable quite to displace the German popular spirit,
which is even yet as vigorous as it is on the Upper
Rhine. Since that time the life of our people
has progressed steadily from strength to strength.
We are before the French to-day in the number and
in the density of our population. How often have
their war orators demanded conquests on the
Rhine because France has been unable to keep
peace with the increase in our population, as if
it were the bounden duty of us Germans to make
up for Celtic unchastity and impotence by pouring
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? What We Demand from France 107
into their veins, every now and then, fresh Ger-
man blood? We have broken with the rules of
their Art, and we can confidently challenge com-
parison between the free movement of our scienti-
fic and religious life, and the spiritual culture
of France. We have succeeded in giving our
richer and stronger language such a freedom and
deHcacy that it need no longer fear the rivalry of
French. Even the advantage of their elder cul-
ture, the fine tone and polish of social intercourse,
is passing away, since the wanton audacity of
the demi-monde of Paris has all but blotted out
the division lines between honourable and de-
graded people. We adopted with gratitude the
ideas of their Revolution, so far as they were
healthy, and we have built them up on the solid
basis of a free administration, such as France
never knew. We are trying earnestly to pro-
cure, after our own fashion, that priceless bless-
ing of the unity of the State for which we have
long envied them; and we believe that we shall be
able by hard work to make up for the slight
advantage in their economic life which they
owe to the Empire and to the situation of their
country.
They have felt the weight of our sword, and we
had challenged the whole world to say which of
the two combatants bore himself with the greater
manliness, uprightness, and modesty. At all times,
the subjection of a German race to France has
been an unhealthy thing; to-day it is an offence
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? io8 What We Demand from France
against the reason of History -- a vassalship of free
men to half -educated barbarians.
Sooner or later the hour must have struck which
would have summoned the growing German
State to demand security from France for the
preservation of our nationality in Alsace. It has
come sooner, and it is more full of promise, than
any of us had hoped ; and it is our business now to
draw honourable lines of separation between the
German and the Gaulish races, and to lay the old
quarrel for ever. Fifty years ago, Amdt lamented
that if right was not done in that day, it would be
very difficult in the future to do it at all. If we
neglect our duty this time, the French will act
with all that vigorous and passionate hatred
which characterizes nations in their decay; and
will fling themselves on Alsace in the rage of their
reawakened detestation of Germany, resolute to
crush out every trace of the German nature.
It would be to our disgrace as much as to our
disadvantage, and we should have to draw the
sword again to protect our own flesh and blood
from the most hateful of all tyrannies -- the
suppression of its language.
The wretched outcome of the Second Peace of
Paris was fruitful of consequences in our domestic
situation; it greatly contributed to fix in the true
hearts of our people that embittered discontent
which was so long the key-note of German political
feeling. Our victorious armies must not return
this time with the bitter cry that their priceless
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? What We Demand from France 109
sacrifices have been rewarded with ingratitude.
What we need above all things is the glad enthusi-
asm that rises buoyant on the wave of great
events -- the joyful self-consciousness which cannot
grow freely within the constraining furrows of
petty Statedom. In all the words of patriotism
which rang through South Germany before the
battle of Worth, there never was a doubt expressed
as to our final victory, but many a one spoke of
the fear that we should have to wade through the
waters of misfortune of some new Jena before we
could reach ultimate victory. We must have
done with this weary self -distrust, which has eaten
into the simple greatness of our national character.
But so long as that wound still gapes on the Upper
Rhine, the German will never cease the sorrowful
lamentation which Schlegel uttered in the days of
our shame :
Upon the Rhine, my own countrie,
Ah, well-a-day, what woe is me!
For that so much is lost to us !
The masses of South Germany know little of
those splendid successes which the sword of Prussia
long since obtained for us. The liberation of
Pomerania, Silesia, Old Prussia, and Schleswig-
Holstein, lay far outside of the circle of their
vision. Yet the old song.
O Strassburg, O Strassburg,
Thou city wondrous fair !
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? no What We Demand from France
is sung by every peasant of the South ; and from the
day when the German flag waves from the Minster
-- and a splendid and enduring reward of victory
crowns the deeds of the German army^ -- ^in the
distant huts of the Black Forest, and the Suabian
Jura, there will be a joyful confidence that the old
German splendours have risen from the dead, and
that a new augmenter has been given to the Empire.
When our imited strength has won that outwork
of the German State, which is now in such mortal
peril, the nation will have pledged its soul to the
idea of imity. The resistance of the new province
will strengthen the impulse of our policy towards
unity, and constrain all sensible men to range
themselves in disciplined loyalty behind the
Prussian throne. The advantage is all the
greater, as it is still possible that some new Re-
publican attempt in Paris might tempt the moon-
struck glance of the German Radicals once more
to turn gradually towards the west. But the
circle of vision of German politics becomes yearly
wider and freer. When the nation feels that the
vital interests of the German States are involved
in the Slavic, the Scandinavian, and the Latin
world, and that we are standing in the midst of
the greatest and most complex revolution of the
century, our parties will learn to rise out of the
dogmatism of party life, and above the poverty of
doctrinaire programmes, to the earnest and lofty
treatment of the great questions which concern the
State.
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? What We Demand from France iii
The German Confederation which has crossed
the line of the Main will best fulfil its national
mission when the clear activity of the North, and
the more delicate and contemplative nature of the
South, stand side by side in beautiful rivalry.
We cannot spare one of all the powerful races
which make up the complete German nation.
But the narrow footstool of the Confederation in
the south-east reaches no farther than the Bohe-
mian forest. The manifold wealth of our German
civilization will be vastly augmented when the
South German nation is more fully represented in
our new State, and the powerful nationality of the
Germans of the Upper Rhine will certainly show
its genuine German colour very soon after the
foreign whitewash has been washed away.
A politico-economical consideration may be
added. Inspiring descriptions of the rich and
happy plains of Germany make a necessary chapter
of our patriotic catechism, and are never omitted
in our German school books. They affect us as a
sign of true love to the land of our forefathers ; but
they are anything but true in themselves. Our
sober judgment cannot refuse to admit that nature
has dealt with our country much more like a step-
mother than a mother. The singularly barren
outline of our shore coast-hne on the North Sea,
and the course of most of our German rivers and
hill-chains, are just as unfavourable to political
unity as they are to commerce. Only a few
strips of our German soil can compare in natural
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? 112 What We Demand from France
fertility with wealthy Normandy, the luxurious
plains of England, and the teeming corn-fields of
the interior of Russia. But here, in Alsace, there
is a real German district, the soil of which, under
favouring skies, is rich with blessings such as only
a very few spots in the Upper Rhenish Palatinate
and the mountain country of Baden enjoy. The
unusual configuration of the country has made it
possible to pierce canals through gaps in the
mountains -- magnificent waterways, from the
Rhine to the basin of the Rhone and of the Seine --
such as German ground scarcely ever admits.
We are by no means rich enough to be able to re-
nounce so precious a possession.
Everything, in fact, is as clear as day. None of
the foreign statesmen who interfered with our
plans at the time of the Second Peace of Paris
ever attempted to meet the arguments of Hum-
boldt. Jealousy of the growing greatness of
Germany, and the opposition which dominated all
that period between the policies of England and
of Russia -- which vied with each other in showing
favour to France -- were decisive. England had
already secured her war prizes in her colonies, and
Russia hers in her Polish territories ; Germany was
left alone to make her further demands.
The full cynicism of this jealous statesmanship
is revealed in the words which the Czar Alexander
permitted himself in a thoughtless moment,
"Either I must have a hand in this pie, or the pie
shall not be baked at all. " Freiherr von Stein
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? What We Demand from France 113
said, sorrowfully, "Russia decides that we are to
remain vulnerable! " What a difference there is
between then and now! We are not now so
exhausted in money and in men as not to be able
to defy the opposition of the whole of Europe.
The neutral Powers might have stopped this
French attempt at robbery by one strong and
timely word. They failed to utter it, and they
cannot complain to-day because we alone decide
what we shall take as the prize of the victory
which we alone have won. We owe it to the clear-
sighted audacity of Count Bismarck that this war
was begun at the right time -- that the Court of
the Tuileries was not allowed the welcome respite
which would have permitted it to complete the
web of its treacherous devices. And as the war
began as a work of clear and statesmanlike calcu-
lation, so it will end. If, during its prosecution,
we have been magnanimous, almost to a fault -- if
we turned aside from the revolting ill-usage of
our countrymen in France, and disdained to re-
quite with a like brutality the loathsome threats
directed against the women of Baden, we are all
the more bound, at all hazards, to be firm about
the terms of peace, and to complete the work of
1 8 13 and of 1815. What lay in all our hearts as a
far-off vision of longing desire has suddenly sprung
up a practical fact, to be dealt with by a nation un-
prepared for it. Occasion urges us ; the wonderful
favour of Destiny bends down to offer us, in
the grey dawn of German unity, the wreath
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? 114 What We Demand from France
which we hardly hoped to have won in the mid-day
splendour of the German Empire. Let us grasp
it with courageous hands, that the blood of the
dear ones who have died for us may not again cry
out against our faint-heartedness.
II
ALSACE AND LORRAINE PAST AND PRESENT
Where lies the frontier which we are justified in
demanding? The answer is simple; for since the
French nation made itself prominent in the Celto-
Romance world, its national life and ours have at
all times stood toughly and sharply opposed to one
another. The two peoples dwelt side by side, not
cast together like the nations which a geographical
necessity forces to mingle at various points in
Eastern Europe. Our West and South have,
for a long period, received more culture than they
gave, and yet the French boundary of language has
been able, in the course of centuries, to advance
no farther than a few hours' march. It became a
source of trouble to both peoples when an arbitrary
system of creating new states wedged the Lor-
raine-Burgundian Empire in between their natural
frontiers, to become an apple of unceasing contests ;
while both made a termination of the struggle
difficult to themselves by an aberration of the
national imagination. To this day the French-
man continues to glance across the Rhine with
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