He knew
every little wheel- work of the gigantic machine;
now he watched with satisfaction how it worked.
every little wheel- work of the gigantic machine;
now he watched with satisfaction how it worked.
Treitschke - 1915 - Germany, France, Russia, and Islam
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? IN MEMORY OF THE GREAT WAR
(A Speech delivered at the Festival of the Commemora-
tion of the War at the Frederick William
University at Berlin on July iq, i8g$)
Dear Colleagues and Fellow-Soldiers,
To-day's festival recalls to us of the older genera-
tion the golden days of our life -- the days when
the grace of God after battle and tribulation and
mourning gloriously fulfilled beyond all our
expectations all the longings of our youth. And
yet, as I begin to speak, I feel keenly how pro-
foundly the world has changed in this quarter of a
century. It is not given to every period to do
great deeds nor to understand them rightly.
After the great crises of history there generally
follows a generation which hears the iron voice of
war, the great moulder of nations, still vibrating
in its own heart, and rejoices with youthful
enthusiasm over what has been gained. But
without the constant work of self-recollection and
self-testing, progress is impossible. New parties
spring up imbued with new ideas ; they ask doubt-
fully or scornfully whether the goal attained was
worth the sacrifice made. The field-marshals of
200
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? In Memory of the Great War 201
the study calculate arrangements which could cer-
tainly have been better made on the patient
paper.
Industrious critics diligently spy out all the
sordid and revolting details which adhere to every
great human exploit, as the fungus to the oak-tree,
and the preponderance of censure easily overwhelms
joy and gratitude. A long period must generally
elapse before a nation resolves to view the great-
ness of its past again on a great scale. The deep
significance of the War of Liberation was not
revealed to the majority of Germans till half a
century afterwards through the works of Hausser,
Droysen, Bernhardi, and Sybel. Let us to-day
turn our eyes away from everything that is trivial
and regard only the moral forces which operated
in the most fortunate of all wars.
When Field-Marshal Moltke once visited his
regiment, the Kolberg Grenadiers, he pointed to
the portrait of Gneisenau -- who had once formed
this brilliant corps behind the ramparts of the
unconquered Pomeranian fortress from the scat-
tered remnants of the old army -- and said, ''Be-
tween us and him there is a great difference.
We have had to record only victories. He has
led the army to victory after a defeat. This
severest test we have not yet undergone. " Who
can hear this utterance without admiring the pro-
found modesty and at the same time the lofty
ambition of the Field-Marshal. But we cannot
merely echo the noble words ; we rather thank the
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? 202 In Memory of the Great War
hero that he has himself confuted them by his
deeds. So, exactly so, unerring as the hammer
of Thor, had the German sword to hew down
opposition, so, contrary to all experience, the
changeable fortune of war had to become abiding,
and garland after garland of victory had to adorn
our banners if this most deeply-slandered and
deeply-scorned of all nations was to win its due
place in the community of States. We had been
for centuries hampered and impeded in the simple
task of national policy by the world-wide power
of our Holy Roman Empire, just as the Italians
were through their Papacy ; in our Confederation of
States we were obliged to let many foreign Powers
co-operate, and saw ourselves at the same time
linked on to a half-German Power, a disguised
foreign one whose insincerity a great part of the
nation, misled by old, fond recollections, would
never recognize. The fame of invincibility which
once no one had dared to deny the armies of
Frederick, had not been restored by all the glori-
ous contests of the War of Liberation ; for foreigners
always said sneeringly, "When the Prussians
stood alone at Jena, they were beaten; only when
allied with other Powers were they again vic-
torious. ' ' And at the same time there grew and grew
in the nation the consciousness of an immeasurable
strength, a living indestructible union of both
intellectual and poHtical Hfe. A nation in a posi-
tion of such unexampled difificulty, so strong in its
justifiable self-esteem, and so weak through its
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? In Memory of the Great War 203
wretched federal constitution, must necessarily fall
into confused and aimless party struggles, and
pass through all the infant ailments of political
life. Among the milHons abroad there was only
one, our faithful friend Thomas Carlyle, who,
in spite of the confusion of our party divisions,
recognized the nobility of the soul of the German
nation. All others were unanimous in the belief
that we would come to nothing, and that this cen-
tral part of the Continent, on whose weakness the
old society of States had so long rested, would never
become strong. In the eyes of foreigners we were
only the comic-looking, jovial members of singing
and shooting clubs, and the German word '' Vater-
land" was, in England, simply a term of contempt.
Then, when Prussia had again entered the old
victorious paths of the Great Elector, and the
Great King freed our Northern Marches, and
shattered the foreign rule of the House of Austria
by the cannon of Koniggratz, Europe was still far
from recognizing the new order of things in Ger-
many. We had in early times aimed at the world-
rule of the Roman Empire, and had been then, by
the cruel justice of history, condemned to an un-
happy cosmopolitanism, so that our territory pro-
vided the arena for the armies and the diplomatic
intrigues of all nations. Was this state of things to
continue?
What we needed was a complete, incontestable
victory, won solely by German strength, which
would compel our neighbours to acknowledge at
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? 204 In Memory of the Great War
last respectfully that we, as a nation, had attained
our majority. This was clearly understood by the
Emperor William, who so often re-echoed his
people's words, when he said in his address from
the throne, *'If Germany silently endured vio-
lations of her rights and of her honour in past
centuries, that was only because she did not realize
in her dismembered condition how strong she
was. " For a long time past we were no longer the
poor, ill-treated nation of 1813, which had seen its
colours disgraced, its lands laid desolate, prayed in
holy wrath, ''Save us from the yoke of slavery! "
and then, quietly prepared for the worst, waged the
unequal strife. On the contrary, at the King's
summons, a free, strong, proud nation arose in
radiant exultation ; she knew her power, and from
amid the confused tumult of public meetings and
the din of the streets, of the newspapers and the
pamphlets, one cry overpowered all other sounds,
''We must, we will conquer. " Poets have com-
pared the grey-haired ruler as he rode majesti-
cally before his knights to the kings of armies
in German antiquity. King William was more;
he was a hero of our time, the dominating mon-
archic leader of an immense democratic mass-move-
ment, which shook the nation from top to bottom,
and, sure of its goal, stormily swept on, regard-
less of the caution of hesitating Courts. It was
a matter of course that the ancient and faithful
nobility of Prussia should joyfully take up arms.
Here in each peasant's farmhouse the talk was
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? In Memory of the Great War 205
stiU of ''the old Fritz" and "the old Blucher/'
Here even in the French churches hung tablets with
the iron cross and the inscription, '' Morts pour le
rot et la patrie/' and the long lists of French names
below showed how deeply a noble State may imbue
noble foreigners with its spirit. But even in the
small States, which had so long foregone the joy
of victory, and now for the first learnt what a
nation in arms means, there awoke everywhere a
like zeal and a like confidence. Then a favourable
turn of fortune brought it about that at the very
beginning of the war the old scores of German
internecine strife were wiped out, and wrongs
committed in old quarrels were adjusted. The
Bavarians, who had already three times owed the
deliverance of their State to the friendship of
Prussia, but through the misleading influences of
the Court had become quite estranged from their
old natural allies, now, led by Prussia's Crown
Prince, helped to win the battles of Weissenburg
and Worth. " Our Fritz, " with his kindly radiant
smile, soon became the favourite of them all;
he knit together the hearts of the South and
North, and it was not long before the Bavarian
reckoned the Prussian as his most faithful brother.
Once, Maurice of Saxony had betrayed the bulwark
of Lorraine to the French. Now Saxon regiments,
nobly atoning for the sins of their fathers at St.
Privat, carried out the final operations in the
battles round Metz; and their Crown Prince
Albert, who four years before at Koniggratz had
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? 2o6 In Memory of the Great War
chivalrously covered the retreat of the defeated
army, now proved himself to be one of the best of
the leaders of the Prussian- German Army. The
envy and jealousy of the German races was absorbed
in the passionate rivalry of good comrades and
blood-relations. Now there was nothing to remind
anyone of the anxious way in which the Prussian
Guards had been spared risks which had caused
so much discontent in 1 8 14. The Guards bled and
fought with much more devotion than many other
corps, and if anyone complained it was only because
he found that his regiment did not come often
enough under fire.
With such an army everything may be dared;
every general aimed at the proud privilege of the
initiative, which King Frederick had reserved
for his Prussians. Spontaneously, and without a
plan, and yet necessitated by the character of our
army, the terrible battle raged round the heights of
Spichem, because each commandant of a corps
without ado went in the direction of the cannon-
firing. One day, sooner than they were com-
manded, the Brandenburgers ascended the left
bank of the Moselle, and through the whole
summer-day, quite unsupported at first, blocked at
Mars la Tour the retreat which would have saved
the whole of the enemy's army in the most heroic
battle of the whole war. Thus two days after-
wards that daring, tremendous battle with a
reversed front was possible, which would have
hurled our forces, if they had not been victorious,
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? In Memory of the Great War 207
into the midst of the enemy's country. As soon as
one army was shut up in Metz, began, as the
musketeers said, the great "battue" against
the other. At Sedan, the descendants surpassed
the deeds of the brave Landsknechts at the battle
of Pavia, which their ancestors had celebrated;
the French Emperor and his last army laid down
their arms. Hitherto our troops had fought a
well-trained army with crushing attacks as befitted
the proud Prussian tradition. This army con-
sisted for a large part of old professional soldiers
who were accustomed to victory, but was inferior
in numbers to its opponents. Now they had
suddenly to undertake an entirely different and
more troublesome task, less suited to the Prussian
character. There commenced what was hitherto
unexampled in all history, the siege of a metro-
polis defended with fanatical courage. While the
Germans beat back the continual sallies of the
Parisian army recruited from the people, which was
far superior to their own in numbers, there pressed
from all sides to the relief of the capital new
armies in countless masses, the choicest of the
French youth, remnants of the old army and
undisciplined mobs in wild confusion.
Against these the besiegers had to conduct great
sallying skirmishes and make bold attacks as far
as the canal and the Loire. We Germans can
surely not give Gambetta the name of "the
raging fool," as many of his countrymen did in
the heat of party strife. To attempt the impossible
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? 2o8 In Memory of the Great War
in order to save one's fatherland is always a great
thing to do. Moreover, the dictator's plans were
not absolutely impossible; with his revolutionary
impetuosity, he created new armies as if by a word,
and fanned the flame of his nation's ardent patriot-
ism into the fury of a race-war. The copious
economic resources of Southern France, which had
been accumulated through long years of industry
and were as yet untouched by the war, seemed
inexhaustible ; but moral resources are not so, either
in the case of nations or individuals. From the
beginning the French armies lacked the fidelity,
the confidence, the consciousness of right which
alone gives defeated troops a stand-by. And now,
when all their fiery courage, all the momentum of
their heavy masses, all the superiority of their
infantry's firearms, could not in twenty battles
turn the fortune of war, and as the Germans,
veiled by the screen of their wide-sweeping cavalry
squadrons, kept on pressing forward, contrary
to all expectations, then even brave hearts were
seized by the Prussian nightmare {le cauchemar
prussien) .
France had already lost the leading position in
Europe since the overthrow of the first Empire, and
then apparently recovered it through the diplo-
matic skill of the third Napoleon. As soon as
Prussia's victories in Bohemia threatened to re-
store a just balance of power, there took posses-
sion of those noisy Parisian circles, which had
always dominated the wavering provinces, a
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? In Memory of the Great War 209
fantastic intoxication of national pride. There
reappeared the old delusion that France's great-
ness depended on the weakness of her neighbours.
The public opinion of the agitators compelled the
sick Emperor to declare war against his will; it
arrogantly controlled and disturbed every move-
ment of the enemy; it compelled the fatal march
to Sedan. After the first defeats, the imperial
throne, whose only support was good fortune,
fell, and the party-rule of the new revolutionary
government could neither exercise justice, nor com-
mand the general respect. The fact that a supe-
rior commands and a subordinate obeys was almost
forgotten in the widespread and unnatural mis-
trust which prevailed. Every misfortune was
regarded as a piece of treachery, even when the
war had seasoned men, and the army of the Loire
had found a commander in Chanzy. Finally,
after the surrender of Paris, the conquered people,
under the eyes of the conqueror, tore each other to
pieces in a terrible civil war.
Seldom has it been so clearly demonstrated that
it is the will which is the deciding factor in national
struggles for existence, and in unity of will we were
the stronger. France, which had so often fomented
and misused our domestic quarrels, all at once
found herself opposed by the vital union of the
Germans ; for a righteous war releases all the natu-
ral forces of character, and, side by side with
hatred, the power of affection. Inviolable con-
fidence bound the soldiers to their officers, and all
14
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? 210 In Memory of the Great War
of them to those in supreme command. The
people of Suabia, Baden, and Bavaria, who had
hitherto known us only as enemies, and were now
for the first time joined to us by the loose tie of
treaties based on international law, said quite as
confidently as the Prussians, "The King and
Moltke will manage it all right! " What a safe-
guard and stay this absolute confidence was for
the mass of the rank-and-file, when, after the
victorious exultation of the summer, they had
now in winter to make acquaintance with the
whole terrible prosaic side of war -- hunger, frost,
exhaustion, necessary mercilessness towards the
enemy, and, being aroused from a short sleep in
the snow-filled furrows by the sound of drums
and fifes, to fresh fights and endless marches the
purport and object of which they did not under-
stand. Many did not learn the value of the
victories they had won till later, as though by hear-
say. Thus, for example, the brave 56th drove
the Gardes Mobiles of Brittany out of the farm La
Tuilerie without suspecting that they had given
a decisive turn to the three days' battle of Le
Mans. "Good will, persistence, and discipline
overcome all difficulties" -- such is Moltke's simple
verdict. This good will, however, was possible only
in a nation of religious-minded soldiers. In simple
humility, without much talking and praying, men
bowed before the Inscrutable, who reaps the harvest
of death on the battle-field. Often did an army
chaplain, when he administered the last consola-
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? In Memory of the Great War 211
tions to the dying, hear from them words of deep
and modest piety.
Those who remained at home also became
more generous, broader-minded, and affectionate;
the seriousness of the crisis Hf ted them above the
selfishness of every-day life. Party strife dis-
appeared, isolated, unpatriotic fools were quickly
reduced to silence, and the longer the struggle
lasted the more firmly did the whole nation unite
in the resolve that this war should restore to us the
German Empire and our old lost w^estern provinces.
One hundred and thirty thousand Germans fell a
sacrifice to war's insatiable demands, but the lines
of the old Landwehr's men which followed them
appeared endless, till more than a million of our
soldiers gradually crossed the French frontier.
The war demanded all. When the reports of
deaths arrived from the West, the fathers and
brothers of those who had fallen said, "Much
mourning, much honour," and even the mothers,
wives, and sisters had in their heavy sorrow the
consolation that their little house owned a leaf
in the growing garland of German glory.
But ideas alone kindle no enduring fire in the
hearts of a nation; they need men. And certainly
it was fortunate that the nation could look up
unitedly to the grey-headed ruler, whose vener-
able figure will always appear greater to coming
generations the more closely it is made the subject
of historical investigation. "His Majesty sees
everything! " the sergeant-majors used to thunder
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? 212 In Memory of the Great War
at their careless men, and they said the truth.
When destiny raised him at an advanced age to the
throne he had never sought, he soon perceived that
Providence had determined him and his army to be
an instrument for its dispensations. "If I did
not beHeve that," he said calmly, ''how could I
otherwise have been able to bear the burden of
this war? " As a youth, he had admired the
nation under arms, when under the pressure of
necessity it had collected to carry out Scham-
horst's plans though only half -drilled ; as a man,
he had constantly considered with Schamhorst's
successor. Boy en, how these unripe ideas might
take a vital shape; finally as king, amid severe
parliamentary struggles, he had carried through
the three-years' service law which strengthened the
troops of the line, and secured us an army which
was at once popular and fully trained.
He knew
every little wheel- work of the gigantic machine;
now he watched with satisfaction how it worked.
Alone, without a council of war, he formed his
resolves according to Moltke's reports. Earlier
and more clearly than all those around him, he
perceived that the battle of Sedan had indeed
decided, but was far from ending the war. He
knew the fervent patriotic pride of the French; he
possessed in a special degree the rich experience
of old age preserved by a powerful memory; he
remembered how fifty-six years previously the
armed throngs of the peasantry of Champagne
had, as it were, started up out of the ground under
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? In Memory of the Great War 213
the eyes of the Prussians. Sooner and more clearly
than all others, he perceived the danger which
threatened from the Loire, and ordered the army
in the South to be strengthened. Thus, till the end
he remained the Commander-in-Chief, and when he
left French territory, even after such victories, he
seriously thought of the perpetual vicissitudes of
mortal things, and warned the army of what was
now united Germany that it could maintain its
position only by perpetual striving after improve-
ment.
It is the characteristic charm of German history
that we have never known a Napoleon suppressing
all the personalities around him. At all great
epochs there have stood near our principal heroes
free men of firm character and assured self-con-
fidence. King William also, a bom ruler, under-
stood how to allow able men, each superior to
himself in his own department, to have a free hand,
each in the right place. Nothing is more admir-
able than the true friendship which united the
Commander-in-Chief to the strategist, the intel-
lectual leader of the army, the wonderful man on
whom prodigal Nature bestowed not only the
sure eye and genial energy of a great commander,
but the keenness of an intelligence which compre-
hended almost the whole range of human know-
ledge and the artistic sense of a classical author.
And by the side of Moltke stood Roon, the stem
and bitterly hated; hard and immovable in his
principles hke a devout dragoon of Oliver Crom-
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? 214 In Memory of the Great War
weirs, he had carried out the reconstitution of the
army according to the instructions of his master;
now his converted opponents called him "Ger-
many's new armourer. " Then came the army-
leaders. After the Crown Prince, Goeben, the
serious and taciturn, of whom his men said that he
could not speak, but also that he could make no
mistake; they did not know that he could write
in a style like that of Csesar's Commentaries.
Then Con stan tine Alvensleben, a genuine son of
the Brandenburg warriors, cheerful and good-
natured, but terrible in battle, impetuous and
unweariable, until at last his troops' shout of
victory, "Hurrah! Brandenburg! " rang out at Le
Mans. Then the spirited, fiery Franke von der
Tann, who now helped to complete what he had
once attempted in the ardent fervour of youth, as
leader of the Schleswig-Holstein voluntary corps;
and so on, a large company of brave and thought-
ful men whom our people in the course of years
will regard with ever-deepening affection as they
do the heroes of the War of Liberation. Just as
the King himself was so simple and assured in his
bearing that the flatterers of the Courts never
dared to make any attempts on him, so his gener-
als, with a very few exceptions, displayed the
modest demeanour which Germans like. Let
anyone go through the forest to the Httle hunting-
lodge of Dreilinden. There in rural retirement
lived the commander to whom the announcement
was made, Monseigneur, fai Vordre de vous rendre
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? In Memory of the Great War 215
la garde imperiale. This was Prince Friedrich
Karl, who brought about the greatest capitulation
in the worid's history.
At last came the time of harvest. Paris sur-
rendered, and the last desperate attempt of the
French against Southern Alsace came to a pitiable
end. Four great armies were taken prisoners or
disarmed, and all the German races had an equal
and glorious share in the enormous success. In
these last weeks of the war there stepped into
the foreground of German history the strong
man of whom the troops had so often spoken by
their bivouac-fires. Ever since historical times
began the masses of people have always rated
character and energy above intellect and culture;
the greatest and most boundless popularity was
always only bestowed on the heroes of religion and
of the sword. The one statesman who seems to be
an exception only confirms the rule. In the popu-
lar mind Bismarck was never anything but the
gigantic warrior with the bronze helmet and the
yellow collar of the cuirassiers of Mars la Tour, as
the painters depicted him riding down the avenue
of poplars at Sedan. It was he who had once
spoken the salutary word, "Get rid of Austria! "
It was he who by treaties with the South German
States had in his far-sighted way prepared for the
inevitable war. And when twenty-five years
ago he read to the Reichstag the French declara-
tion of war, all felt as though he were the first to
raise the cry, ''All Germany on into France! "
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? 2i6 In Memory of the Great War
and it seemed to all as though he rode into the
enemy's land like a herald in front of the German
squadrons. Now when the war was over he
summed up the net results of the great battles,
and after troublesome negotiations settled the
constitution of the new kingdom. This constitu-
tion seemed quite new, and yet it evoked the old
sacred unforgettable emotions of German loyalty
to the Kaiser. It appeared complicated even to
formlessness, and yet it was fundamentally simple
because it admitted of unlimited development.
In her relations to foreign countries Germany
was henceforth one, and in spite of much doubt
all discerning people hoped that the Empire,
possessing an imperial head, would now attain
to its full growth.
This work of Bismarck's brought peace and
reconciliation to nearly all the old factions which
had hitherto struggled on our territory. They
had all made mistakes, and almost all rediscovered
in the constitution of the Empire some of their
most deeply-cherished projects. Our princes
especially had been in the wrong. In the course
of an eventful history they had often been the
protectors of German religious freedom and the
rich many-sidedness of our civilization, but had
been often misled by dynastic envy and pride,
even to the point of committing treachery. At
the middle of the century their pride was at its
height, for what else was the object of the war of
1866 except to break in pieces the State of the
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? In Memory of the Great War 217
great Frederick, and to degrade it to the wretched
condition of the petty German princedoms? But
the dethroning of the sovereigns of Hanover, Hesse,
and Nassau was a tremendous warning to the
princes. They recollected themselves and remem-
bered the noble traditions of imperial sentiment
in the old princely families ; and as soon as the war
began they gathered round their royal leader.
Therefore they could, according to the old privi-
leges of the German princes, themselves elect their
emperor, and secure for themselves their proper
share in the new imperial power. There in France
was the first foundation laid for that invisible
council of German princes, which is something else
than the Council of the Confederation, which is
not mentioned in any article of the imperial con-
stitution, and yet always works perceptibly for the
good of the Fatherland. Never yet at a critical
time has the honest help of the princes failed the
Hohenzollem Kaisers.
The Conservative parties in Prussia had
courageously championed the reconstitution of the
army, but had at first followed the German policy
of the new Chancellor of the Confederation not
without mistrust; but now they saw the martial
glory of their King established, and soon recognized
that the revolutionary idea of German unity really
signified nothing else than the victory of the
monarchic constitution over dynastic anarchy.
A tardy reparation was made to the old Gotha
Party, the much-ridiculed professors of Frankfort.
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? 21 8 In Memory of the Great War
They had certainly made a mistake when they
thought to constrain the imperial power by the
authoritative decree of a parliament ; but now there
fell to them the honour of being the first pioneers
of the nation's thought. What their leader,
Dahlmann, had said in the spring of 1848, was
literally fulfilled : "When Germany's united council
of princes leads before the Reichstag a Prince of
their own choice as hereditary head of the Empire,
then freedom and order will co-exist in harmony. "
Even the Democrats, so far as they were not mere
visionaries, were able to rejoice at a success.
Their best representative, Ludwig Uhland, had
been in the right when he prophesied, "No head
will be crowned over Germany which is not richly
anointed with democratic oil. " Without the
co-operation of the Parliaments of the North Ger-
man Confederation and the Southern States the
new imperial power could not have come into
existence.
The heaviest blow befell the partisans of Austria,
the "Great Germans. "^ So severe was it that
even their party -name entirely disappeared. But
those who were sincere among them had only
fought against the German "rival-Emperor"
because they feared a Prussian imperial power
would be too weak to sustain the position of the
nation as one of the Great Powers. And how was
it now? It was never doubtful whether a man was
a German or not. We bore the mark of our good
* That is, partisans of the union of Germany and Austria.
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? In Memory of the Great War 219
and evil qualities as distinctly impressed upon our
brows as formerly did the Greeks, our kindred in
temperament and destiny. But it was always a
matter of dispute for centuries where Germany
exactly was ; its boundaries were constantly chang-
ing or disappearing in the fog of "rights of the
Empire. " Now for the first time there existed
a German State whose frontiers were clearly
defined. It had lost the frontier territories of the
South-east, which for a long time past had only
been loosely connected with the Empire, but as a
compensation had finally recovered by conquest
those on the Rhine and the Moselle, which had
been torn away from the Empire. It had also,
through the State of the Hohenzollems, won
wide territories in the East and North which had
never or merely nominally belonged to the old
Empire, i. e. , Silesia, Posen, Prussia, the land of the
old Teutonic orders, and Schleswig. It was more
powerful than the old Empire had been for six
centuries. Who could now speak of it sneeringly
as ''Little Germany"? Out of the perpetual ebb
and flow of races in Central Europe there had
finally emerged two great Empires -- one purely
German with a mixture of religions, the other
Catholic, and comprising a variety of races who
yet could not dispense with the German language
and culture. Such an outcome of the struggles of
centuries could not fail to satisfy for a time even
the imagination of the "Greater Germany"
enthusiasts. The great majority of the nation
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? 220 In Memory of the Great War
joined in jubilantly when, in the Palace of Ver-
sailles, the acclamation of the princes and the army
greeted the Emperor, who in his deep modesty
accepted the new dignity only with hesitation.
Not all the blossoms of those days of enthusiasm
have ripened into fruit. We hoped then that the
intelligible resentment of the conquered would in
two decades at least have grown milder, and that
a friendly and neighbourly relation between
two peoples so closely united by common aims
of civilization would again be possible. But our
hopes were vain. Over the Vosges there came to
us voices of hatred, unanswered indeed, but irre-
concilable; serious and learned people even sug-
gested to us to give up volimtarily the western
frontier territories which had been recovered by
the sacrifice of thousands of our men. This was an
impudent insult, to which in the consciousness of
our good right we could only reply with cold con-
tempt. Unavoidably the influences of the war of
1870 operate much longer in the formation of the
community of European States than did those of
the War of Liberation. The irreconcilable hatred
of our neighbours confines our foreign policy to one
spot, and cramps the development of our power
overseas. We hoped also that the old crippling
jealousy between Austria and Germany would
disappear, that the two would stand independently
side by side as free allies, and that then the Teu-
tonic race on the Danube would flourish more
vigorously. This also was an error. With total
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? In Memory of the Great War 221
lack of consideration, the sub-Germanic peoples
of the Danube Empire verified the old rule of
historical ingratitude towards the Germans who
had brought them civilization. Forcibly the
conviction was impressed upon us that at home, at
any rate, where we are masters, we must defend
every inch-breadth of German civilization against
foreign Powers. Moreover, it was natural that
after our victory a truce should be proclaimed
between the German parties, but our party
struggles assumed rougher and coarser shapes
from year to year.
In the natural course of things, after the victory,
a truce was proclaimed between the German
political parties. But our party strifes have
become from year to year rougher and coarser.
They concern themselves less with political ideas
than with economic interests; they stir up the
flame of hatred between class and class, and
threaten the peace of society.
This coarsening of politics has its deepest source
in a serious alteration which has taken place in
our whole national life. Much that we considered
characteristic of a decaying old world is the out-
come of every over-cultivated city-civilization,
and is being repeated to-day before our eyes. A
democratized society does not care, as enthusi-
asts suppose, for the aristocracy of talent, but
for the power of gold or of the mob, or both to-
gether. In the new generation there is disappear-
ing terribly fast, what Goethe called the final aim
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? 222 In Memory of the Great War
of all moral education -- reverence: reverence for
God; reverence for the barriers which nature has
placed between the two sexes, and the limits
which the structure of human society has imposed
upon desire; reverence for the Fatherland which, as
an ideal, is said to be yielding its place to the
dream of a sensual and cosmopolitan plutocracy.
The wider culture spreads the more shallow it
becomes; the thoughtfulness of the ancient world
is despised ; only that which serves the aims of the
immediate future seems still important. Where
everyone gives his opinion about everything,
according to the newspaper and the encyclopaedia,
there original mental power becomes rare, and with
it the fine courage of ignorance, which marks an
independent mind. Science, which, once descend-
ing too deep, sought to fathom the inscrutable,
loses itself in expansion, and only isolated pines of
original thought tower above the low undergrowth
of collections of memoranda. The satiated taste,
which no longer understands the true, goes after
realism, and prizes the wax figure more than
the work of art. In the tedium of an empty
existence the affected naturalness of betting and
athletic sports gains an undeserved importance,
and when we see how immoderately the heroes of
the circus and the performers of the playground
are over-prized, we are unpleasantly reminded of
the enormous costly mosaic picture of the twenty-
eight prize-fighters in the Baths of Caracalla.
These are all serious signs of the time. But
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? In Memory of the Great War 223
no one stands so high that he can only accuse his
people. We Germans, especially, have often
sinned against ourselves through extravagant love
of fault-finding. And no one can say that he
really knows his own people. In the spring of
1870 even the most sanguine did not suppose that
our young men would strike as they did. So we,
also, will hope that to-day, deep in the hearts of
our people, there are at work rejuvenating powers
which we know not of. And how much that does
not pass away has, in spite of all, remained to us
from the great war. The Empire stands upright,
stronger than we ever expected ; every German dis-
cerns its mighty influence in the ordinary occur-
rences of every day, in the current exchange of the
market-place. None of us could live without the
Empire, and how strongly the thought of it glows
in our hearts is shown by the grateful affection
which seeks to console the first Imperial Chancellor
for the bitter experiences of his old age. In my
youth it was often said, *'If the Germans become
German, they will found the kingdom on earth
which will bring peace to the world. " We are
not so inoffensive any longer. For a long time
past we have known that the sword must maintain
what the sword won, and to the end of history,
the virile saying will hold good, gta gta ^la'C^ziai,
"Force is overcome by force. " And yet there is
a deep significance in that old verse about the
Germans. Not only was the war for Prussia's
existence -- the Seven Years' War, -- the first Euro-
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? IN MEMORY OF THE GREAT WAR
(A Speech delivered at the Festival of the Commemora-
tion of the War at the Frederick William
University at Berlin on July iq, i8g$)
Dear Colleagues and Fellow-Soldiers,
To-day's festival recalls to us of the older genera-
tion the golden days of our life -- the days when
the grace of God after battle and tribulation and
mourning gloriously fulfilled beyond all our
expectations all the longings of our youth. And
yet, as I begin to speak, I feel keenly how pro-
foundly the world has changed in this quarter of a
century. It is not given to every period to do
great deeds nor to understand them rightly.
After the great crises of history there generally
follows a generation which hears the iron voice of
war, the great moulder of nations, still vibrating
in its own heart, and rejoices with youthful
enthusiasm over what has been gained. But
without the constant work of self-recollection and
self-testing, progress is impossible. New parties
spring up imbued with new ideas ; they ask doubt-
fully or scornfully whether the goal attained was
worth the sacrifice made. The field-marshals of
200
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? In Memory of the Great War 201
the study calculate arrangements which could cer-
tainly have been better made on the patient
paper.
Industrious critics diligently spy out all the
sordid and revolting details which adhere to every
great human exploit, as the fungus to the oak-tree,
and the preponderance of censure easily overwhelms
joy and gratitude. A long period must generally
elapse before a nation resolves to view the great-
ness of its past again on a great scale. The deep
significance of the War of Liberation was not
revealed to the majority of Germans till half a
century afterwards through the works of Hausser,
Droysen, Bernhardi, and Sybel. Let us to-day
turn our eyes away from everything that is trivial
and regard only the moral forces which operated
in the most fortunate of all wars.
When Field-Marshal Moltke once visited his
regiment, the Kolberg Grenadiers, he pointed to
the portrait of Gneisenau -- who had once formed
this brilliant corps behind the ramparts of the
unconquered Pomeranian fortress from the scat-
tered remnants of the old army -- and said, ''Be-
tween us and him there is a great difference.
We have had to record only victories. He has
led the army to victory after a defeat. This
severest test we have not yet undergone. " Who
can hear this utterance without admiring the pro-
found modesty and at the same time the lofty
ambition of the Field-Marshal. But we cannot
merely echo the noble words ; we rather thank the
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? 202 In Memory of the Great War
hero that he has himself confuted them by his
deeds. So, exactly so, unerring as the hammer
of Thor, had the German sword to hew down
opposition, so, contrary to all experience, the
changeable fortune of war had to become abiding,
and garland after garland of victory had to adorn
our banners if this most deeply-slandered and
deeply-scorned of all nations was to win its due
place in the community of States. We had been
for centuries hampered and impeded in the simple
task of national policy by the world-wide power
of our Holy Roman Empire, just as the Italians
were through their Papacy ; in our Confederation of
States we were obliged to let many foreign Powers
co-operate, and saw ourselves at the same time
linked on to a half-German Power, a disguised
foreign one whose insincerity a great part of the
nation, misled by old, fond recollections, would
never recognize. The fame of invincibility which
once no one had dared to deny the armies of
Frederick, had not been restored by all the glori-
ous contests of the War of Liberation ; for foreigners
always said sneeringly, "When the Prussians
stood alone at Jena, they were beaten; only when
allied with other Powers were they again vic-
torious. ' ' And at the same time there grew and grew
in the nation the consciousness of an immeasurable
strength, a living indestructible union of both
intellectual and poHtical Hfe. A nation in a posi-
tion of such unexampled difificulty, so strong in its
justifiable self-esteem, and so weak through its
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? In Memory of the Great War 203
wretched federal constitution, must necessarily fall
into confused and aimless party struggles, and
pass through all the infant ailments of political
life. Among the milHons abroad there was only
one, our faithful friend Thomas Carlyle, who,
in spite of the confusion of our party divisions,
recognized the nobility of the soul of the German
nation. All others were unanimous in the belief
that we would come to nothing, and that this cen-
tral part of the Continent, on whose weakness the
old society of States had so long rested, would never
become strong. In the eyes of foreigners we were
only the comic-looking, jovial members of singing
and shooting clubs, and the German word '' Vater-
land" was, in England, simply a term of contempt.
Then, when Prussia had again entered the old
victorious paths of the Great Elector, and the
Great King freed our Northern Marches, and
shattered the foreign rule of the House of Austria
by the cannon of Koniggratz, Europe was still far
from recognizing the new order of things in Ger-
many. We had in early times aimed at the world-
rule of the Roman Empire, and had been then, by
the cruel justice of history, condemned to an un-
happy cosmopolitanism, so that our territory pro-
vided the arena for the armies and the diplomatic
intrigues of all nations. Was this state of things to
continue?
What we needed was a complete, incontestable
victory, won solely by German strength, which
would compel our neighbours to acknowledge at
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? 204 In Memory of the Great War
last respectfully that we, as a nation, had attained
our majority. This was clearly understood by the
Emperor William, who so often re-echoed his
people's words, when he said in his address from
the throne, *'If Germany silently endured vio-
lations of her rights and of her honour in past
centuries, that was only because she did not realize
in her dismembered condition how strong she
was. " For a long time past we were no longer the
poor, ill-treated nation of 1813, which had seen its
colours disgraced, its lands laid desolate, prayed in
holy wrath, ''Save us from the yoke of slavery! "
and then, quietly prepared for the worst, waged the
unequal strife. On the contrary, at the King's
summons, a free, strong, proud nation arose in
radiant exultation ; she knew her power, and from
amid the confused tumult of public meetings and
the din of the streets, of the newspapers and the
pamphlets, one cry overpowered all other sounds,
''We must, we will conquer. " Poets have com-
pared the grey-haired ruler as he rode majesti-
cally before his knights to the kings of armies
in German antiquity. King William was more;
he was a hero of our time, the dominating mon-
archic leader of an immense democratic mass-move-
ment, which shook the nation from top to bottom,
and, sure of its goal, stormily swept on, regard-
less of the caution of hesitating Courts. It was
a matter of course that the ancient and faithful
nobility of Prussia should joyfully take up arms.
Here in each peasant's farmhouse the talk was
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? In Memory of the Great War 205
stiU of ''the old Fritz" and "the old Blucher/'
Here even in the French churches hung tablets with
the iron cross and the inscription, '' Morts pour le
rot et la patrie/' and the long lists of French names
below showed how deeply a noble State may imbue
noble foreigners with its spirit. But even in the
small States, which had so long foregone the joy
of victory, and now for the first learnt what a
nation in arms means, there awoke everywhere a
like zeal and a like confidence. Then a favourable
turn of fortune brought it about that at the very
beginning of the war the old scores of German
internecine strife were wiped out, and wrongs
committed in old quarrels were adjusted. The
Bavarians, who had already three times owed the
deliverance of their State to the friendship of
Prussia, but through the misleading influences of
the Court had become quite estranged from their
old natural allies, now, led by Prussia's Crown
Prince, helped to win the battles of Weissenburg
and Worth. " Our Fritz, " with his kindly radiant
smile, soon became the favourite of them all;
he knit together the hearts of the South and
North, and it was not long before the Bavarian
reckoned the Prussian as his most faithful brother.
Once, Maurice of Saxony had betrayed the bulwark
of Lorraine to the French. Now Saxon regiments,
nobly atoning for the sins of their fathers at St.
Privat, carried out the final operations in the
battles round Metz; and their Crown Prince
Albert, who four years before at Koniggratz had
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? 2o6 In Memory of the Great War
chivalrously covered the retreat of the defeated
army, now proved himself to be one of the best of
the leaders of the Prussian- German Army. The
envy and jealousy of the German races was absorbed
in the passionate rivalry of good comrades and
blood-relations. Now there was nothing to remind
anyone of the anxious way in which the Prussian
Guards had been spared risks which had caused
so much discontent in 1 8 14. The Guards bled and
fought with much more devotion than many other
corps, and if anyone complained it was only because
he found that his regiment did not come often
enough under fire.
With such an army everything may be dared;
every general aimed at the proud privilege of the
initiative, which King Frederick had reserved
for his Prussians. Spontaneously, and without a
plan, and yet necessitated by the character of our
army, the terrible battle raged round the heights of
Spichem, because each commandant of a corps
without ado went in the direction of the cannon-
firing. One day, sooner than they were com-
manded, the Brandenburgers ascended the left
bank of the Moselle, and through the whole
summer-day, quite unsupported at first, blocked at
Mars la Tour the retreat which would have saved
the whole of the enemy's army in the most heroic
battle of the whole war. Thus two days after-
wards that daring, tremendous battle with a
reversed front was possible, which would have
hurled our forces, if they had not been victorious,
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? In Memory of the Great War 207
into the midst of the enemy's country. As soon as
one army was shut up in Metz, began, as the
musketeers said, the great "battue" against
the other. At Sedan, the descendants surpassed
the deeds of the brave Landsknechts at the battle
of Pavia, which their ancestors had celebrated;
the French Emperor and his last army laid down
their arms. Hitherto our troops had fought a
well-trained army with crushing attacks as befitted
the proud Prussian tradition. This army con-
sisted for a large part of old professional soldiers
who were accustomed to victory, but was inferior
in numbers to its opponents. Now they had
suddenly to undertake an entirely different and
more troublesome task, less suited to the Prussian
character. There commenced what was hitherto
unexampled in all history, the siege of a metro-
polis defended with fanatical courage. While the
Germans beat back the continual sallies of the
Parisian army recruited from the people, which was
far superior to their own in numbers, there pressed
from all sides to the relief of the capital new
armies in countless masses, the choicest of the
French youth, remnants of the old army and
undisciplined mobs in wild confusion.
Against these the besiegers had to conduct great
sallying skirmishes and make bold attacks as far
as the canal and the Loire. We Germans can
surely not give Gambetta the name of "the
raging fool," as many of his countrymen did in
the heat of party strife. To attempt the impossible
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? 2o8 In Memory of the Great War
in order to save one's fatherland is always a great
thing to do. Moreover, the dictator's plans were
not absolutely impossible; with his revolutionary
impetuosity, he created new armies as if by a word,
and fanned the flame of his nation's ardent patriot-
ism into the fury of a race-war. The copious
economic resources of Southern France, which had
been accumulated through long years of industry
and were as yet untouched by the war, seemed
inexhaustible ; but moral resources are not so, either
in the case of nations or individuals. From the
beginning the French armies lacked the fidelity,
the confidence, the consciousness of right which
alone gives defeated troops a stand-by. And now,
when all their fiery courage, all the momentum of
their heavy masses, all the superiority of their
infantry's firearms, could not in twenty battles
turn the fortune of war, and as the Germans,
veiled by the screen of their wide-sweeping cavalry
squadrons, kept on pressing forward, contrary
to all expectations, then even brave hearts were
seized by the Prussian nightmare {le cauchemar
prussien) .
France had already lost the leading position in
Europe since the overthrow of the first Empire, and
then apparently recovered it through the diplo-
matic skill of the third Napoleon. As soon as
Prussia's victories in Bohemia threatened to re-
store a just balance of power, there took posses-
sion of those noisy Parisian circles, which had
always dominated the wavering provinces, a
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? In Memory of the Great War 209
fantastic intoxication of national pride. There
reappeared the old delusion that France's great-
ness depended on the weakness of her neighbours.
The public opinion of the agitators compelled the
sick Emperor to declare war against his will; it
arrogantly controlled and disturbed every move-
ment of the enemy; it compelled the fatal march
to Sedan. After the first defeats, the imperial
throne, whose only support was good fortune,
fell, and the party-rule of the new revolutionary
government could neither exercise justice, nor com-
mand the general respect. The fact that a supe-
rior commands and a subordinate obeys was almost
forgotten in the widespread and unnatural mis-
trust which prevailed. Every misfortune was
regarded as a piece of treachery, even when the
war had seasoned men, and the army of the Loire
had found a commander in Chanzy. Finally,
after the surrender of Paris, the conquered people,
under the eyes of the conqueror, tore each other to
pieces in a terrible civil war.
Seldom has it been so clearly demonstrated that
it is the will which is the deciding factor in national
struggles for existence, and in unity of will we were
the stronger. France, which had so often fomented
and misused our domestic quarrels, all at once
found herself opposed by the vital union of the
Germans ; for a righteous war releases all the natu-
ral forces of character, and, side by side with
hatred, the power of affection. Inviolable con-
fidence bound the soldiers to their officers, and all
14
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? 210 In Memory of the Great War
of them to those in supreme command. The
people of Suabia, Baden, and Bavaria, who had
hitherto known us only as enemies, and were now
for the first time joined to us by the loose tie of
treaties based on international law, said quite as
confidently as the Prussians, "The King and
Moltke will manage it all right! " What a safe-
guard and stay this absolute confidence was for
the mass of the rank-and-file, when, after the
victorious exultation of the summer, they had
now in winter to make acquaintance with the
whole terrible prosaic side of war -- hunger, frost,
exhaustion, necessary mercilessness towards the
enemy, and, being aroused from a short sleep in
the snow-filled furrows by the sound of drums
and fifes, to fresh fights and endless marches the
purport and object of which they did not under-
stand. Many did not learn the value of the
victories they had won till later, as though by hear-
say. Thus, for example, the brave 56th drove
the Gardes Mobiles of Brittany out of the farm La
Tuilerie without suspecting that they had given
a decisive turn to the three days' battle of Le
Mans. "Good will, persistence, and discipline
overcome all difficulties" -- such is Moltke's simple
verdict. This good will, however, was possible only
in a nation of religious-minded soldiers. In simple
humility, without much talking and praying, men
bowed before the Inscrutable, who reaps the harvest
of death on the battle-field. Often did an army
chaplain, when he administered the last consola-
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? In Memory of the Great War 211
tions to the dying, hear from them words of deep
and modest piety.
Those who remained at home also became
more generous, broader-minded, and affectionate;
the seriousness of the crisis Hf ted them above the
selfishness of every-day life. Party strife dis-
appeared, isolated, unpatriotic fools were quickly
reduced to silence, and the longer the struggle
lasted the more firmly did the whole nation unite
in the resolve that this war should restore to us the
German Empire and our old lost w^estern provinces.
One hundred and thirty thousand Germans fell a
sacrifice to war's insatiable demands, but the lines
of the old Landwehr's men which followed them
appeared endless, till more than a million of our
soldiers gradually crossed the French frontier.
The war demanded all. When the reports of
deaths arrived from the West, the fathers and
brothers of those who had fallen said, "Much
mourning, much honour," and even the mothers,
wives, and sisters had in their heavy sorrow the
consolation that their little house owned a leaf
in the growing garland of German glory.
But ideas alone kindle no enduring fire in the
hearts of a nation; they need men. And certainly
it was fortunate that the nation could look up
unitedly to the grey-headed ruler, whose vener-
able figure will always appear greater to coming
generations the more closely it is made the subject
of historical investigation. "His Majesty sees
everything! " the sergeant-majors used to thunder
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? 212 In Memory of the Great War
at their careless men, and they said the truth.
When destiny raised him at an advanced age to the
throne he had never sought, he soon perceived that
Providence had determined him and his army to be
an instrument for its dispensations. "If I did
not beHeve that," he said calmly, ''how could I
otherwise have been able to bear the burden of
this war? " As a youth, he had admired the
nation under arms, when under the pressure of
necessity it had collected to carry out Scham-
horst's plans though only half -drilled ; as a man,
he had constantly considered with Schamhorst's
successor. Boy en, how these unripe ideas might
take a vital shape; finally as king, amid severe
parliamentary struggles, he had carried through
the three-years' service law which strengthened the
troops of the line, and secured us an army which
was at once popular and fully trained.
He knew
every little wheel- work of the gigantic machine;
now he watched with satisfaction how it worked.
Alone, without a council of war, he formed his
resolves according to Moltke's reports. Earlier
and more clearly than all those around him, he
perceived that the battle of Sedan had indeed
decided, but was far from ending the war. He
knew the fervent patriotic pride of the French; he
possessed in a special degree the rich experience
of old age preserved by a powerful memory; he
remembered how fifty-six years previously the
armed throngs of the peasantry of Champagne
had, as it were, started up out of the ground under
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? In Memory of the Great War 213
the eyes of the Prussians. Sooner and more clearly
than all others, he perceived the danger which
threatened from the Loire, and ordered the army
in the South to be strengthened. Thus, till the end
he remained the Commander-in-Chief, and when he
left French territory, even after such victories, he
seriously thought of the perpetual vicissitudes of
mortal things, and warned the army of what was
now united Germany that it could maintain its
position only by perpetual striving after improve-
ment.
It is the characteristic charm of German history
that we have never known a Napoleon suppressing
all the personalities around him. At all great
epochs there have stood near our principal heroes
free men of firm character and assured self-con-
fidence. King William also, a bom ruler, under-
stood how to allow able men, each superior to
himself in his own department, to have a free hand,
each in the right place. Nothing is more admir-
able than the true friendship which united the
Commander-in-Chief to the strategist, the intel-
lectual leader of the army, the wonderful man on
whom prodigal Nature bestowed not only the
sure eye and genial energy of a great commander,
but the keenness of an intelligence which compre-
hended almost the whole range of human know-
ledge and the artistic sense of a classical author.
And by the side of Moltke stood Roon, the stem
and bitterly hated; hard and immovable in his
principles hke a devout dragoon of Oliver Crom-
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? 214 In Memory of the Great War
weirs, he had carried out the reconstitution of the
army according to the instructions of his master;
now his converted opponents called him "Ger-
many's new armourer. " Then came the army-
leaders. After the Crown Prince, Goeben, the
serious and taciturn, of whom his men said that he
could not speak, but also that he could make no
mistake; they did not know that he could write
in a style like that of Csesar's Commentaries.
Then Con stan tine Alvensleben, a genuine son of
the Brandenburg warriors, cheerful and good-
natured, but terrible in battle, impetuous and
unweariable, until at last his troops' shout of
victory, "Hurrah! Brandenburg! " rang out at Le
Mans. Then the spirited, fiery Franke von der
Tann, who now helped to complete what he had
once attempted in the ardent fervour of youth, as
leader of the Schleswig-Holstein voluntary corps;
and so on, a large company of brave and thought-
ful men whom our people in the course of years
will regard with ever-deepening affection as they
do the heroes of the War of Liberation. Just as
the King himself was so simple and assured in his
bearing that the flatterers of the Courts never
dared to make any attempts on him, so his gener-
als, with a very few exceptions, displayed the
modest demeanour which Germans like. Let
anyone go through the forest to the Httle hunting-
lodge of Dreilinden. There in rural retirement
lived the commander to whom the announcement
was made, Monseigneur, fai Vordre de vous rendre
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? In Memory of the Great War 215
la garde imperiale. This was Prince Friedrich
Karl, who brought about the greatest capitulation
in the worid's history.
At last came the time of harvest. Paris sur-
rendered, and the last desperate attempt of the
French against Southern Alsace came to a pitiable
end. Four great armies were taken prisoners or
disarmed, and all the German races had an equal
and glorious share in the enormous success. In
these last weeks of the war there stepped into
the foreground of German history the strong
man of whom the troops had so often spoken by
their bivouac-fires. Ever since historical times
began the masses of people have always rated
character and energy above intellect and culture;
the greatest and most boundless popularity was
always only bestowed on the heroes of religion and
of the sword. The one statesman who seems to be
an exception only confirms the rule. In the popu-
lar mind Bismarck was never anything but the
gigantic warrior with the bronze helmet and the
yellow collar of the cuirassiers of Mars la Tour, as
the painters depicted him riding down the avenue
of poplars at Sedan. It was he who had once
spoken the salutary word, "Get rid of Austria! "
It was he who by treaties with the South German
States had in his far-sighted way prepared for the
inevitable war. And when twenty-five years
ago he read to the Reichstag the French declara-
tion of war, all felt as though he were the first to
raise the cry, ''All Germany on into France! "
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? 2i6 In Memory of the Great War
and it seemed to all as though he rode into the
enemy's land like a herald in front of the German
squadrons. Now when the war was over he
summed up the net results of the great battles,
and after troublesome negotiations settled the
constitution of the new kingdom. This constitu-
tion seemed quite new, and yet it evoked the old
sacred unforgettable emotions of German loyalty
to the Kaiser. It appeared complicated even to
formlessness, and yet it was fundamentally simple
because it admitted of unlimited development.
In her relations to foreign countries Germany
was henceforth one, and in spite of much doubt
all discerning people hoped that the Empire,
possessing an imperial head, would now attain
to its full growth.
This work of Bismarck's brought peace and
reconciliation to nearly all the old factions which
had hitherto struggled on our territory. They
had all made mistakes, and almost all rediscovered
in the constitution of the Empire some of their
most deeply-cherished projects. Our princes
especially had been in the wrong. In the course
of an eventful history they had often been the
protectors of German religious freedom and the
rich many-sidedness of our civilization, but had
been often misled by dynastic envy and pride,
even to the point of committing treachery. At
the middle of the century their pride was at its
height, for what else was the object of the war of
1866 except to break in pieces the State of the
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? In Memory of the Great War 217
great Frederick, and to degrade it to the wretched
condition of the petty German princedoms? But
the dethroning of the sovereigns of Hanover, Hesse,
and Nassau was a tremendous warning to the
princes. They recollected themselves and remem-
bered the noble traditions of imperial sentiment
in the old princely families ; and as soon as the war
began they gathered round their royal leader.
Therefore they could, according to the old privi-
leges of the German princes, themselves elect their
emperor, and secure for themselves their proper
share in the new imperial power. There in France
was the first foundation laid for that invisible
council of German princes, which is something else
than the Council of the Confederation, which is
not mentioned in any article of the imperial con-
stitution, and yet always works perceptibly for the
good of the Fatherland. Never yet at a critical
time has the honest help of the princes failed the
Hohenzollem Kaisers.
The Conservative parties in Prussia had
courageously championed the reconstitution of the
army, but had at first followed the German policy
of the new Chancellor of the Confederation not
without mistrust; but now they saw the martial
glory of their King established, and soon recognized
that the revolutionary idea of German unity really
signified nothing else than the victory of the
monarchic constitution over dynastic anarchy.
A tardy reparation was made to the old Gotha
Party, the much-ridiculed professors of Frankfort.
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? 21 8 In Memory of the Great War
They had certainly made a mistake when they
thought to constrain the imperial power by the
authoritative decree of a parliament ; but now there
fell to them the honour of being the first pioneers
of the nation's thought. What their leader,
Dahlmann, had said in the spring of 1848, was
literally fulfilled : "When Germany's united council
of princes leads before the Reichstag a Prince of
their own choice as hereditary head of the Empire,
then freedom and order will co-exist in harmony. "
Even the Democrats, so far as they were not mere
visionaries, were able to rejoice at a success.
Their best representative, Ludwig Uhland, had
been in the right when he prophesied, "No head
will be crowned over Germany which is not richly
anointed with democratic oil. " Without the
co-operation of the Parliaments of the North Ger-
man Confederation and the Southern States the
new imperial power could not have come into
existence.
The heaviest blow befell the partisans of Austria,
the "Great Germans. "^ So severe was it that
even their party -name entirely disappeared. But
those who were sincere among them had only
fought against the German "rival-Emperor"
because they feared a Prussian imperial power
would be too weak to sustain the position of the
nation as one of the Great Powers. And how was
it now? It was never doubtful whether a man was
a German or not. We bore the mark of our good
* That is, partisans of the union of Germany and Austria.
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? In Memory of the Great War 219
and evil qualities as distinctly impressed upon our
brows as formerly did the Greeks, our kindred in
temperament and destiny. But it was always a
matter of dispute for centuries where Germany
exactly was ; its boundaries were constantly chang-
ing or disappearing in the fog of "rights of the
Empire. " Now for the first time there existed
a German State whose frontiers were clearly
defined. It had lost the frontier territories of the
South-east, which for a long time past had only
been loosely connected with the Empire, but as a
compensation had finally recovered by conquest
those on the Rhine and the Moselle, which had
been torn away from the Empire. It had also,
through the State of the Hohenzollems, won
wide territories in the East and North which had
never or merely nominally belonged to the old
Empire, i. e. , Silesia, Posen, Prussia, the land of the
old Teutonic orders, and Schleswig. It was more
powerful than the old Empire had been for six
centuries. Who could now speak of it sneeringly
as ''Little Germany"? Out of the perpetual ebb
and flow of races in Central Europe there had
finally emerged two great Empires -- one purely
German with a mixture of religions, the other
Catholic, and comprising a variety of races who
yet could not dispense with the German language
and culture. Such an outcome of the struggles of
centuries could not fail to satisfy for a time even
the imagination of the "Greater Germany"
enthusiasts. The great majority of the nation
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? 220 In Memory of the Great War
joined in jubilantly when, in the Palace of Ver-
sailles, the acclamation of the princes and the army
greeted the Emperor, who in his deep modesty
accepted the new dignity only with hesitation.
Not all the blossoms of those days of enthusiasm
have ripened into fruit. We hoped then that the
intelligible resentment of the conquered would in
two decades at least have grown milder, and that
a friendly and neighbourly relation between
two peoples so closely united by common aims
of civilization would again be possible. But our
hopes were vain. Over the Vosges there came to
us voices of hatred, unanswered indeed, but irre-
concilable; serious and learned people even sug-
gested to us to give up volimtarily the western
frontier territories which had been recovered by
the sacrifice of thousands of our men. This was an
impudent insult, to which in the consciousness of
our good right we could only reply with cold con-
tempt. Unavoidably the influences of the war of
1870 operate much longer in the formation of the
community of European States than did those of
the War of Liberation. The irreconcilable hatred
of our neighbours confines our foreign policy to one
spot, and cramps the development of our power
overseas. We hoped also that the old crippling
jealousy between Austria and Germany would
disappear, that the two would stand independently
side by side as free allies, and that then the Teu-
tonic race on the Danube would flourish more
vigorously. This also was an error. With total
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? In Memory of the Great War 221
lack of consideration, the sub-Germanic peoples
of the Danube Empire verified the old rule of
historical ingratitude towards the Germans who
had brought them civilization. Forcibly the
conviction was impressed upon us that at home, at
any rate, where we are masters, we must defend
every inch-breadth of German civilization against
foreign Powers. Moreover, it was natural that
after our victory a truce should be proclaimed
between the German parties, but our party
struggles assumed rougher and coarser shapes
from year to year.
In the natural course of things, after the victory,
a truce was proclaimed between the German
political parties. But our party strifes have
become from year to year rougher and coarser.
They concern themselves less with political ideas
than with economic interests; they stir up the
flame of hatred between class and class, and
threaten the peace of society.
This coarsening of politics has its deepest source
in a serious alteration which has taken place in
our whole national life. Much that we considered
characteristic of a decaying old world is the out-
come of every over-cultivated city-civilization,
and is being repeated to-day before our eyes. A
democratized society does not care, as enthusi-
asts suppose, for the aristocracy of talent, but
for the power of gold or of the mob, or both to-
gether. In the new generation there is disappear-
ing terribly fast, what Goethe called the final aim
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? 222 In Memory of the Great War
of all moral education -- reverence: reverence for
God; reverence for the barriers which nature has
placed between the two sexes, and the limits
which the structure of human society has imposed
upon desire; reverence for the Fatherland which, as
an ideal, is said to be yielding its place to the
dream of a sensual and cosmopolitan plutocracy.
The wider culture spreads the more shallow it
becomes; the thoughtfulness of the ancient world
is despised ; only that which serves the aims of the
immediate future seems still important. Where
everyone gives his opinion about everything,
according to the newspaper and the encyclopaedia,
there original mental power becomes rare, and with
it the fine courage of ignorance, which marks an
independent mind. Science, which, once descend-
ing too deep, sought to fathom the inscrutable,
loses itself in expansion, and only isolated pines of
original thought tower above the low undergrowth
of collections of memoranda. The satiated taste,
which no longer understands the true, goes after
realism, and prizes the wax figure more than
the work of art. In the tedium of an empty
existence the affected naturalness of betting and
athletic sports gains an undeserved importance,
and when we see how immoderately the heroes of
the circus and the performers of the playground
are over-prized, we are unpleasantly reminded of
the enormous costly mosaic picture of the twenty-
eight prize-fighters in the Baths of Caracalla.
These are all serious signs of the time. But
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? In Memory of the Great War 223
no one stands so high that he can only accuse his
people. We Germans, especially, have often
sinned against ourselves through extravagant love
of fault-finding. And no one can say that he
really knows his own people. In the spring of
1870 even the most sanguine did not suppose that
our young men would strike as they did. So we,
also, will hope that to-day, deep in the hearts of
our people, there are at work rejuvenating powers
which we know not of. And how much that does
not pass away has, in spite of all, remained to us
from the great war. The Empire stands upright,
stronger than we ever expected ; every German dis-
cerns its mighty influence in the ordinary occur-
rences of every day, in the current exchange of the
market-place. None of us could live without the
Empire, and how strongly the thought of it glows
in our hearts is shown by the grateful affection
which seeks to console the first Imperial Chancellor
for the bitter experiences of his old age. In my
youth it was often said, *'If the Germans become
German, they will found the kingdom on earth
which will bring peace to the world. " We are
not so inoffensive any longer. For a long time
past we have known that the sword must maintain
what the sword won, and to the end of history,
the virile saying will hold good, gta gta ^la'C^ziai,
"Force is overcome by force. " And yet there is
a deep significance in that old verse about the
Germans. Not only was the war for Prussia's
existence -- the Seven Years' War, -- the first Euro-
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