No More Learning

But we do not approach this new province with
the covetousness of the old Swiss Confederates,
nor with the lazy pride of the Dutch, but with the
honest wish to bring to our newly-won brothers our
German character, the best of our possessions, our
mother-tongue and its literature, and all the noble
elements of German civilization. The task is
unspeakably difficult, and I wish to ask you not to
make it more difficult by academic disputes regard-
ing the question, What is unitary and what is fed-
eral? These are theoretical questions which in
my opinion have already occupied too much room
in the discussions of the Commission.
We have heard in the Commission the distinct
assertion that the imperial province is the first step
to the unitary State. On the other hand, I have
heard from many of my friends that the imperial
province represents the true triumph of federalism.
I ask. Whither will these academic disputes con-
duct us? We wish here honestly to acknow-
ledge the constitution of the Confederation, as
it has been formed, with all its faults, and we
wish to say without more ado that what has been
done in the West affords no precedent for what
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? i84 Alsace an Imperial Province
might happen in Central Germany. There in the
West we have to regulate provinces hitherto
belonging to a foreign empire, in which at present
there is no legally constituted State authority.
In Germany there are States with constitutional
dynasties, and no less constitutional diets, and
what we do and consider necessary in Alsace does
not impose limits on what we may some day
be able to settle for the separate German States
with their actually existing constitutional order.
Let us then approach the question without fur-
ther ado, and allow me to ask. What should we do
for the Alsatians in order to win them for Ger-
many? I find myself in complete agreement with
what the Commission says; we wish to treat our
new fellow-countrymen from the first moment as
Germans, and therefore we wish to instil into them
from the beginning some of the fundamental
ideas of German political law which form, so to
speak, the political atmosphere which we breathe.
Among these fundamental ideas of German
political law I reckon the monarchy. The Alsa-
tians, like all Frenchmen, have too much grown
out of the habit of relying on the blessing of
monarchy. Bourbons, Princes of Orleans, Napo-
leons, and Republican experiments have pressed
on each others' heels in swift alternation, and
after all the changes nothing remains but the
unalterable despotism of the prefects. Here it is
our part to show that we Germans imderstand
monarchy in a much higher, nobler sense.
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 185
We wish to honour our new fellow-countrymen
by giving them the most powerful and leading
dynasty that we possess; and when hereafter the
time comes when some of the old imperial castles
in Alsace are built up again, then we need not be
ashamed to set up the eagle of the Hohenzollerns
by the Hon of the Hohenstaufens, which still keeps
watch on the King's Tower by Schlettstadt.
But the monarchy, the imperial power which
the Reichstag will set up there in Alsace, shall
possess all the inalienable rights of monarchy, and
among these I count as the least this one : that in a
monarchic State nothing can happen against the
expressed will of the monarch. In the further
course of the debate I should like to draw your
serious attention to this point. Sacred among
these fundamental ideas of German political life I
reckon the universal duty of bearing arms, our
national military power. As you know, there
has been lately an Assembly of Notables from
Alsace in Strassburg, and among many more pro-
per and easily satisfied requests it has also ex-
pressed the wish that the introduction of our law
of military service might be postponed as long as
possible. To this I beg to reply: This wish pro-
ceeds from the scanty knowledge of German
life which still prevails in Alsace ; it proceeds in the
first place from the vague idea that there may some
day be a war with France, and the hearts of the
Alsatians revolt against the thought of fighting
against their old fellow-countrymen. But we
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? i86 Alsace an Imperial Province
cannot come to an understanding with the Alsa-
tians until they give up such vague expectations,
and learn to regard their present condition as one
which will last for ever. Further, that wish
proceeds from a confusion of the French and Ger-
man military establishments. Our Army is not
an aggressive power intended within a measured
interval to return home with a certain amount
of military glory ; it is the nation in arms, it is the
great school of courage, of manly discipline, of
moral self-sacrifice on the part of the whole flower
of the nation, and from this great school we do not
wish to exclude the Alsatians at the outset. On
the contrary, I say that the German law of mih-
tary service should be introduced as soon as the
economic conditions of the frontier territory admit
of it.
Further, I count, gentlemen, among the essential
fundamental ideas of German political life the
noble freedom of our intellectual, and especially of
our religious, culture. In these last few days a
step has been taken towards this goal -- one of
those steps of sound statecraft whose value is only
recognized by later generations. A new epoch
of civihzation has begun in Alsace on the happy
day when the good old Prussian rule of compul-
sory school-attendance was introduced. On this
foundation of the national school I wish to see the
structure of German grammar-school education
rise, which is not bound by the monotonous rules
of the French lycees, but allows free scope to the
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 187
teacher's personality. Above all, we wish to see a
university rise in the frontier territory. It should
not be a district university -- of such we possess
plenty; it should be equipped with a truly royal
munificence; it should be a German university.
If nowadays a new university is to enter among the
considerable number of her sisters, and maintain
her place in this severe rivalry, she must possess a
character of her own, she must be a personality
distinct from all others. But the special character
of the University of Strassburg -- if indeed the
Federal Council has a regard for what is truly
German -- should consist in the freedom of the
humanist sciences, not in professional studies.
Alsace, the old country of the German humanist,
should once more witness a revival of free science
in its capital.
Closely connected with this is the duty of
introducing into Alsace that peace between
religious creeds which is Germany's glory, the
complete hitherto too much disturbed equality
of rights between the Evangelical and Catholic
Churches, whose traditional privileges we do not
in the least think of encroaching upon.
Furthermore, we should grant the Alsatians at
once the rights of German citizenship as a com-
pensation for what they have lost, the possibility
of giving practical proof of their abilities in the
whole of France which they have hitherto enjoyed.
Then I wish that in the shortest possible time,
in a time which indeed the Government only can
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? i88 Alsace an Imperial Province
securely fix, the German market should be open to
Alsace. This country, thanks to its perverted Bona-
partist education, is only too much accustomed
to attach very great weight to material gains.
It is only natural that we should first attach them
to ourselves by material advantages, for it is on
this basis that a spiritual approximation will be
completed.
Then there is another fundamental idea of
German political life. We wish and demand for
Alsace self-government in the German sense, the
self-government which was recently outlined for
us by the Imperial Chancellor. It is undeniable,
gentlemen, that it is a bold idea to make the
experiment of free self-government there in Alsace ;
for every form of self-government depends in the
first place upon the higher classes, and it is pre-
cisely these classes which are the least friendly
towards us. There will be many a disappoint-
ment, for German self-government consists less in
extended electoral rights than in the fulfilment
of difficult duties of honorary service in com-
munities and districts. But I think we should
pluck up courage and do quickly what is necessary.
I wish to see an early election of the mayors, and
an early election of the enlarged general councils.
When a danger is present, we wish to learn to know
it, to look it in the face, and to adopt our measures
accordingly.
But now allow me to say just as openly what we
cannot offer the Alsatians, if the safety of the
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 189
German Empire is not to be impaired. I believe
we have the pleasure to see to-day upon the plat-
form deputies from Alsace among the audience;
at any rate, every word which is spoken to-day
in the House will be read in Alsace. It will seem
to our new fellow-countrymen somewhat strange
if, as soon as they join us, we tell them which of
their wishes we consider cannot be fulfilled, but
that I think is the German custom. The Alsatians
have been for years past fed with promises and
promises; they have thereby acquired a habit of
mistrust towards every government which rules
them -- a mistrust which has become a character-
istic feature of the French people. But our habits
are German; we do not promise the Alsatians too
much -- but then, gentlemen, we keep our word.
The Imperial Chancellor has indeed recently
exhorted us not to look too far ahead ; but I regret
that I cannot altogether obey this warning. Why
should I keep back, gentlemen, what everyone
thinks in secret? Years ago, when the name of
Bismarck was the most hated in all Germany,
I defended the great poHcy of our leading
statesman with all my heart; I shall therefore
be allowed to point out a danger which lies in the
fact that such an extraordinary man stands at the
head of German affairs. It is the habit of extra-
ordinary statesmen to count on themselves and
their superior strength, and, so to speak, to make
institutions to fit themselves. They can create
institutions which are obscure, confused, and
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? I90 Alsace an Imperial Province
difficult to control, though they believe, and
rightly, that they can manage them. But we,
gentlemen, should remember the smaller men who
will hereafter follow Prince Bismarck. I cannot
reconcile it to my conscience, as a representative of
the people, to stand on a ship as it were with my
eyes bandaged and to sail out into a sea full of
reefs, simply trusting that a weather-proof pilot is
at the helm. We should all know the sea which
our keel ploughs, and the rocks which we wish to
avoid. Among these "rocks," the impossible
wishes which are cherished in Alsace, I regard as
the first the desire expressed by the Notables that
the province Alsace-Lorraine should be changed
into a State. I consider this idea as altogether
objectionable ; it is another instance of one spring-
ing from lack of knowledge of German hfe. We
have been contending vigorously, gentlemen, dur-
ing many years for the unity of Germany ; we have
seen in the course of this century hundreds of
small German States collapse; we are now pre-
pared as men of good feeling to respect and to spare
the few States which remain, because they are no
longer in a condition to be exactly injurious to
the might of the German Empire. But to create
a new State in addition to the already too great
existing number, now when we are hard at work
counteracting the German tendency to division,
to form afresh a State out of three departments
which never in the course of their history were a
State, to cultivate a new half-German provincial-
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 191
ism on the severely endangered frontier: that,
gentlemen, I call striking our own face.
Let us draw some deductions from the foregoing
considerations. I find in the clauses of the pro-
posed law, which for the rest I do not regard
exactly as a masterpiece, an excellent passage on
the sixth page, in which it is stated that according
to the spirit of the constitution of the German
Empire every federal State should possess a repre-
sentative assembly to administer the government
and to take part in legislation. I am glad to hear
this declaration from the Federal Council. My
political friends and I intend to make use of this,
this autumn, in the case of the fortunate land of
Mecklenburg, and to ask the representatives of
Mecklenburg whether such a representative
assembly really exists there. This old German
principle should now be applied, but only as it
is possible in a province which neither is nor will be
a State. I should not like to have a diet in Strass-
burg possessing the same powers as that of
Stuttgart or Munich, but I should like one or two
or three provincial assemblies, according to cir-
cumstances. That is a question of administrative
efficiency. The real centre of legislature shall
remain here in this House. The Alsatians will
hereafter be represented among us, only by sixteen
representatives, it is true, but their importance will
be proportionately much greater than their num-
ber, because the}^ will possess the immense supe-
riority of special knowledge, and the Alsatians can
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? 192 Alsace an Imperial Province
rely upon it that their demands will be considered
by us. The great danger, the most serious matter
for consideration regarding the Imperial Province,
is that we might easily artificially cherish there
a new provincialism of the most unwholesome
kind, which would be constantly fomented afresh
by French agents. There are certainly many
easy-going people who say that Alsatian provincial-
ism is the bridge between the French and German
nationalities. But I ask, gentlemen, is it absolutely
necessary to carry coals to Newcastle? Must we
cherish a provincialism which is already flourish-
ing vigorously ? There lives in Alsace a provincial-
ism similar to that which made the Pomeranians
patriotic Swedes, and made the Hanoverians proud
of the three Crowns of England, a provincialism
more firmly and deeply rooted than anywhere else
in Germany. It seems to me to be our proper task
to oppose it, and to take care that it does not
become a danger; and therefore I also wish for
this province no Alsatian officials. There should
be no separate life there; the educated youth of the
country should not grow accustomed, as they say
with us at home, to remaining "on the spot. " You
know what the conferring of citizenship in Ger-
many has hitherto signified regarding this matter.
How few Reuss-Schleizers have entered the Prus-
sian State-service, although they are able to do so!
If we give the frontier territories an independent
class of officials, the educated Alsatians will grow
accustomed to remaining at home, and will become
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 193
more and more estranged from the Germans. I
wish for a class of officials which the Kaiser can
transfer under certain circumstances to the omin-
ous places Schwelm and Stallupohnen. ^
Yes, gentlemen, that is practical German unity.
That is the peculiar quality of all real political
greatness that under certain circumstances it can
become unpleasant for individuals. We have a
superfluity of centrifugal elements in Germany.
We want to take care that there should be some
classes who belong to the whole of Germany.
Among these I reckon in the first place ourselves, as
representatives of the whole nation; and secondly,
the civil servants of the Empire, who, please
God, will be ever more numerous and powerful.
For the same reason I desire, moreover, and I
believe that is a wish shared by the Alsatians
themselves, that there should not be any foolish
experiment with a princely governor, a prince who
must keep a Court. Such a prince (I say it with
all respect for those of high birth) can only count
as one of the worst officials, because he must
keep a Court. The kinds of society which can
be won with such courtly tinsel are of such a
kind that I at any rate gladly dispense with their
support.
Moreover, the Alsatians should have no legal
claim to be governed as an undivided province.
It is in my opinion merely a question of adminis-
trative efficiency whether you divide the country
* Extreme east of Prussia.
13
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? 194 Alsace an Imperial Province
into one, two, or three departments. Here I
would like to draw your attention to a point
of view which has hitherto been little regarded
in Germany. I received, some days ago, a
letter from one of the most distinguished and
experienced Alsatians, a man of unmixed French
blood, who nevertheless possesses enough political
intelligence to perceive the unavoidability of the
new circumstances and to adapt himself to them.
He says to me, "Our greatest fear is this, lest we
should be treated in the same way as the French
Lorrainers. Here in Alsace, where German blood
flows in the people's veins, it will soon be possible
to proceed with mildness; in Lorraine severity
alone will be of use. We should be displeased if
we were treated from the same point of view as
these obstinate Lorrainers. "
I do not know, gentlemen, whether my corre-
spondent is right, and I believe here in the whole
House there is no one, not even the best-informed
of us. Count Luxburg himself, who could say with
certainty that matters will turn out as the writer
of the letter asserts. But if it is really so, if
actually the feeling in French Lorraine differs
so widely from that of German Lorraine and Ger-
man Alsace, then it would be better to centralize
the government in Berlin, and to set up three in-
dependent departmental authorities who could pro-
ceed in a different way on the Moselle from that on
the Rhine and the 111. At any rate, it is better
that the Government should now make a mis-
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?
Alsace an Imperial Province 195
take, than that we should make a false step in
legislation.
Let me, in conclusion, gentlemen, put some
separate questions. As regards the necessity of
the dictatorship, we are all here in the House, as in
Alsace, I suppose, agreed. I hope the proposal to
summon deputies from Alsace hither as early as the
autumn will meet with no approval in this House ;
it would be in my opinion a sin against the Alsa-
tians themselves. One should not lead a people in-
to temptation ; one should not make demands on
the political intelligence of a people which are
beyond average human power to meet. It is not
on our account that I fear Alsatian deputies being
called here too soon, for we are strong enough
to defy such a danger. But what sort of mo-
tives could they be which could as early as this
bring about a complete change of mind in the
Alsatians? A few months ago they elected
Gambetta to the French National Assembly ; they
have since learnt to know our soldiers, and learnt
so much -- that we are not the devils we are said to
be -- but we are not in any way justified in expect-
ing affection and real devotion from Alsace. The
reasons which as early as this could bring about
reasonable elections could only be materialistic
ones, and we cannot allow such a moral confusion
in the people's ideas to be produced. With sound
German pride we have despised the Bonapartist
jugglery of universal suffrage. I think that with
the officials whom we found on our arrival there,
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? 196 Alsace an Imperial Province
with the well-oiled machine of bureaucratic in-
fluence on the elections, we could have evoked a
strong majority for the incorporation of the pro-
vince into Germany. I thank God that we have
been spared this disgraceful spectacle, and I wish
therefore that we quietly wait awhile. Let us wait
till the countenances of our fellow-countrymen,
distorted by grief, fear, and passion, have become
smooth again ; later on they will show us their real
faces.
Then I must once more remind you of the
necessity of preserving our Emperor's honour there
in the Imperial Province. We should not bring
him into the position, which is unworthy of him, of
having to carry out laws against which he himself
has pronounced his opinion quite recently. It is
a great danger for a land with such weak mon-
archic traditions to bring the person of the mon-
arch into a false dependent position.
Now a word about the rights which we must
reserve to ourselves.
I think that to grant to Alsace the right that
the Reichstag should approve whatever the
dictatorship resolves upon would be dangerous
both for it and its inward peace. It would be
really tantamount to challenging contradiction
and agitation against the Emperor's laws if every
Alsatian could say to himself, ''We can get every-
thing reversed through the Reichstag in a few
weeks, if we only scream loud enough! " In this
way we shall reach no result. On the contrary, I
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 197
consider it right to reserve for the Reichstag the
control over the money liabilities of the province.
I think that necessary in order to prevent a new
kind of State being formed there by mistakes of the
dictatorship, and by seeking to impose on the
province a burden such as only a State is accus-
tomed to bear. That would be, as I fear, the first
step towards the founding of a new kind of inter-
mediary State -- a step which I could never approve.
Finally, since we have reserved to ourselves
such modest rights as long as the dictatorship lasts,
it is not less than fair that we shorten its duration.
The appointment of January, 1873, as its Hmits,
will, I expect, be approved by the House. If it
was a question of allowing the Imperial Chancellor
to govern there with full powers I would allow
a few months more. But it is beyond human
power to fulfil simultaneously the duties of an
Imperial Chancellor and a Governor of Alsace. If
the attempt was made, the management of present
affairs would necessarily fall into the hands of a
few Privy Councillors whom most of us do not
even know by name, and who, being anonymous,
would be free from the control even of public
opinion. I should consider it unwarrantable to
entrust dictatorial power for any length of time to
such second-class officials. It is perhaps more
wholesome for the Alsatians themselves that they
should make an experiment as early as 1873,
a year before they have another election. That
would afford an opportunity to eliminate the last
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? 198 Alsace an Imperial Province
remnants of bitterness which may be slumbering in
the souls of this people ; a year afterwards intelli-
gence and cool calculation may assert themselves.
And now, gentlemen, allow me to close with a
request which in the mouth of a new-comer may
seem presumptuous. Recently in the Press the
reproach has been levelled at us in a not very
dignified way that the Reichstag does not rise to
the height of these great days, and that its trans-
actions do not show the intellectual capacity which
such a proud and aspiring nation must demand
of its representatives. I believe, gentlemen, the
cause of this reproach is not due to us: it is due
to the unfortunate mistake of our being summoned
too soon. In the absence of more weighty busi-
ness, all kinds of legislative improvisations have
turned up, such as that proposal about diets and
such-like, among whose admirers I cannot count
myself. But now, gentlemen, we have really a
great subject before us. I beg you that we show
ourselves worthy of the occasion. We wish to
emphasize the rights of the two powers which
represent the unity of our nation, the rights of the
Imperial Power and of Parliament, and we do not
wish, when we have made sure of that, to dispute
further about details which we might wish other-
wise. For we have a feeling of assurance that
the work of Germanization in Alsace will and
must succeed. Recently I have been reading the
secret documents regarding the organization of the
Rhine provinces in the years 181 5 and 18 16. At
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 199
that time all the officials spoke in a tone of dis-
couragement; they said that inhabitants of these
provinces were a hybrid people, quite estranged
from German nationality, and that many decades
must pass before one could cease issuing orders
in both languages. What German, gentlemen, can
read these fears expressed in 18 15 without feeling
his heart swell proudly and hopefully? It is true
that to-day we nowhere possess in Germany a
government even faintly comparable in strength
to the old Prussian Government of that time.
That has become unavoidably a darker side of
constitutional life for Germany. But, on the
other hand, to-day we are a nation who issue from
an unequal struggle, not weary to death, but in a
well-assured state of prosperity, abounding with
vigour and strength. To-day we are a nation
which does not wait anxiously for a king to fulfil
his word, but which already possesses and uses
parliamentary rights. Finally, we are a nation
which has raised itself, not by foreign help, but by
its own strength.
These, gentlemen, are hopeful signs. I tell you
that the instinct of nature and the call of the blood
will speak in Alsace, the call of the blood which
has already brought back so many lost sons of our
great Fatherland to our Empire. I tell you the
day will come when, in the most distant villages of
the Vosges, the German peasant will say, "It is a
happiness and an honour to be a citizen of the
German Empire. "
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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.