anti-popular in all our tastes and predilections; we may regard the vague aspirations of nationality as more sacred and fascinating than any others; we may have the strongest preference for the Celtic or the Teutonic type of intellect and character. But all these sentiments are utterly apart from the questions-Which party is clearly right and which grievously wrong in the present quarrel? What are the victors justified in demanding, and what ought the vanquished frankly to concede? And what, for the best interests of Europe, as well as of the combatants themselves, ought we to desire as the issue of the strife? Thus much, at least, may be asked from controversialists on the two sides, if it cannot be expected from the combatants themselves-That they shall candidly recognise indisputable facts, and frankly admit the legitimate inferences deducible therefrom. Among those facts which it is idle to palliate or deny are the historical antecedents of Prussia. They are not altogether creditable, and they are not particularly reassuring. For nearly two centuries the rulers of Prussia have pursued a career of aggrandisement, curiously persistent, nearly always successful, and unscrupulous without precedent or parallel, except in the brigand-like encroachments of Napoleon the Great. She has steadily enriched herself and extended her boundaries at the cost of every neighbouring State, usually by war and foray, sometimes by diplomacy and intrigue, always choosing her moment with a sagacity unchecked by shame or pity, and clinging to her conquests or her spoil with the tenacity of a bulldog. She has always been parsimonious, even to niggardliness; and her chiefs have therefore been generally rich enough to take prompt advantage of any sudden opportunity for the acquisition of territory or of power. She has usually been as hard and ruthless to her own people as to surrounding nations, and thus they have never grown either enervated by luxury or demoralized by administrative corruption. She has pursued her aim with that patient, unswerving, cold, vigilant consistency, which in the end tires out or wears through every obstacle. She has despoiled enemies and allies without partiality or predilection. By these means she has risen from being a small, poor, second-rate principality at the beginning of the eighteenth century, to being the first military power in Europe before the close of the nineteenth; and a few years more will probably see her monarch the Emperor, and virtual, if not nominal and absolute, wielder of all the forces-moral, material, and warlike-of a nation or confederacy of forty millions of the finest people in Europe. At one epoch she robbed Austria and Poland. She came out of the wars with Napoleon bleeding and suffering indeed, but enlarged, regenerated, and mightier than ever, and recognised as one of the five great powers of Europe. She then put herself at the head of that stirring, prolific, invigorating idea of a united Germany, the magic and future triumph of which she alone had the sagacity to discern in time; and in the might of that idea she despoiled Denmark and humbled Austria, without either compassion for the weak or deference for the strong; and, as a final stroke, she absorbed Hanover and a multitude of smaller States, and has now virtually, and we may assume definitively, reached the secure hegemony of the new German nation she has created. It is undeniable that in all this there is enough to excite the gravest uneasiness in the minds of all European statesmen, and to make them watch the new champion with vigilant mistrust. Certainly there is nothing in her past to reassure us as to the future. She has been in the main the same under all rulers and all ministers—under a Parliamentary as under an Autocratic régime. Nominally constitutional, with an elected Chamber and a broad basis for elections, the sovereign has yet been able to impose his will upon the nation; and the Liberal party, intelligent, resolute, and numerous as it was, has proved powerless to control him, or, probably, in consideration of the object he put forward or really had in view, thought it wise or patriotic to waive all opposition for a time-feeling that the unity of Germany was, at present at least, a paramount and more pressing purpose than the ascendency of liberal doctrines or individual freedom. Neither is it possible to disguise from ourselves that the virulent passions excited by conflict, and the acquisitive passions stimulated by success, are beginning their usual and apparently inevitable work of demoralization on the German people. The high-minded and single-minded purity of purpose with which, on the part of the majority of the nation at least, this war was entered upon, has suffered notable impairment. The popular pride has been inflatedas well it may; and the popular pretensions are increasing in their scope, and deplorably receding in their equity. Influential organs and eminent publicists are putting forward claims redolent rather of inflamed imaginations than of sober justice or political necessity. The army, too—though we believe most charges brought against it to be false, and nearly all to be exaggerated—appears to be falling off from that unusually rigid standard of consideration for non-combatants and of tenderness to the vanquished with which it set out. Conflict exasperates even the gentlest natures-and the Prussians are not exactly gentle. The habit of living on the conquered can scarcely fail to foster that hard insolence of demeanour for which Prussian officials, and especially military officials, have long been noted. All this, we confess, makes us most anxious for the termination of the conflict, and not too confident even that its termination will bring about a speedy return to better feelings and soberer thoughts. its got At the same time there is much to reassure us against what so many are beginning to dread-viz., the upspringing of a lust of conquest on the part of Germany, scarcely less immoral and not at all less formidable than that which has so long made France the pest and scourge of Europe. We need not fancy that there are moral elements in the Teutonic character which exempt it from the love of power common to all powerful nations, but we think that among Germans this passion will exist under certain specific modifications, and show itself rather as the pride of grandeur than the thirst for domination. It will be rather self-contained and self-worshipping than encroaching or acquisitive. The race has a definite ideal before it will be restless and probably aggressive till that idea has eyes; realised; it may then, and we trust will, repose contented with the completion of its purpose. German ambition and German dreams are, we incline to think, intrinsically different from French ones. The first yearn for completeness and unity at home: the second for a dictatorial empire abroad. The former, therefore, are limited and specific; the latter are in their essence unbounded and insatiable. The Teutonic aim and idea is the gathering together and fusing into one great nation all the scattered and divided fragments of the Fatherland,—of making the nation co-extensive with the race. Some, no doubt, give too loose and wide an interpretation to this idea, and would extend its practicable application to a degree which neither right nor logic would warrant. But the conception itself is clear and definite enough, and certainly not illegitimate nor ignoble. We do not believe that as yet at least, and on the whole-the people or their leaders, whether thinkers, statesmen, or poets, desire to conquer, rule, or dictate to, States and races alien to the genuine Teutonic stock; or would seek for that stock anything beyond ample scope for its development, and free outlets for its industry;-an ambition and a claim that might lead it far, no doubt, but still must be admitted to be far less menacing to the peace of Europe, and far more defensible in its character than the vague, greedy, illimitable Gallic thirst for territory, influence, and dominion. We believe, moreover, that the moral sense of the German people is higher, clearer, and more active than that of France; that a distinctly unjust and aggressive war would never be popular in Germany, and would be emphatically condemned by that substantial and educated public opinion to which dynastic and warrior ambition must bow at last, especially in a nation essentially intellectual and cultivated. Then the military system of Germany is not favourable to aggressive warfare. The army, it is true, national as it is in its basis and character, is, from the very perfection and peculiarity of its recently modified organization, a tremendous weapon in the hands of an ambitious monarch or an unscrupulous statesman, and an unpopular war might, possibly enough, be undertaken. But we greatly question whether it could be carried on with any zeal or ardour, or would last long. And certain it is that nothing short of an almost universal and highly-strung enthusiasm pervading all ranks and classes, even though wielded by the stern resolution of Bismarck, and the wonderful strategic genius of Moltke, could ever achieve such successes as have marked the present conflict. Those who argue from the campaign of 1870, and draw thence the conclusion of the irresistible might and supremacy of Prussian armies per se, are basing a general inference on very inadequate premises. The cumstances of that campaign have been altogether e cir Never again, probably, can such a number of con- Acentional. success be expected to meet together. All genius on the one side; all the e corrur“ milite the 147 vero ent causes of military and political ry and political imbecility on on, indolence, conceit, luxury, and --y; rottenness in every department of civil and military administration; government which had no real root in the affections of the people, and was abhorred by all the educated classes in the nation; a cause hopelessly unjust, which could claim no approval, and could arouse only the worst and lowest passions in its favour; and an army of which the soldiers had no respect for or confidence in their chiefs, and the officers no control over their men. On the other side, a cause which enlisted all the best feelings and the most stimulating associations of the whole people, as well as their angriest passions; the vehement and unanimous uprising of an exasperated nation; an iron organization, which combined all capacities in one resistless whole; hardy habits, mutual confidence, and a readiness for any efforts and any sacrifices. Such a marvellous concurrence of all the elements of victory with all the causes of defeat can scarcely, without a miracle, occur again. But the essential point to notice is that in Germany, by the very conditions of its military system, a great war and a long war involves such a terrible disturbance of every social arrangement, carries such individual and universal distress into every household, so deranges every career, professional or industrial alike, so paralyses commerce and manufacturing productiveness, as to be not only ruinously costly in the end, but to be supportable only by the strongest enthusiasm and the most general unanimity of sentiment. In a patriotic war in Germany the nation would be unanimous and irresistible; a dynastic or purely aggressive war, one for selfish or aggrandising objects, would be almost impossible, or, if possible, would call forth only half the nation's strength. In no other country in Europe is a war so felt and realised and brought home to every household. In no other country does war bring with it such dreadful disorganization of all social life-such a rupture of pursuits and prospects for the young, such an interruption of peace and comfort to the old. But there are some remaining considerations, of minor weight, no doubt, but still not without their influence, which make us dread German ambition less than the vast power put forth in this campaign might otherwise suggest. We must indicate them very briefly. In the first place, the personnel of Prussian statesmen must be largely altered ere many years are passed. Moltke is an old man, Bismarck is not immortal, and so far as is yet known, has no analogue-no kindred spirit on whom his mantle will descend. The king, essentially a soldier, and the head and soul of the military party, with no ideas beyond those of piety and war, with neither a cultivated nor a very sound intelligence, will shortly be succeeded by a prince of an altogether different type, and endowed with far wider and more enlightened views of what constitutes the true grandeur of a nation. Under him we may reasonably hope that Germany will devote her energies rather to consolidation than to conquest. In the second place, it is nearly certain that the Liberal party in Prussia, which for so many years carried on a struggle with Bismarck and the squireen classes for a more constitutional régime, but which has been in abeyance since the war with Denmark, will renew its old efforts with more tranquil times, and with the accomplishment of the national dream of unification, which even Liberals deemed more essential, or at least more urgent, than their special party aims. And, thirdly, these Liberals, who represent the really progressive and intellectual life of Prussia, will, we expect, find themselves powerfully reinforced by the amalgamation into the North German Confederation of the Southern States. The South Germans will introduce a modifying and softening element-features at once milder, wider, more genial, and more intellectual,—into the harsh, narrow, martinetlike character of the Prussians; and at one and the same time render Prussian conquests more unlikely to come, and less intolerable if they do come. If in time the Austrian Germans should also join their brethren in one grand union, we may fairly hope that the more genial and sympathetic elements of the Teutonic race will gradually predominate over the sterner and harder ones which now make Prussians so generally detested, in spite of their sterling and often admirable qualities. Let us turn to France. And here I must say at the outset that, of all the positions taken by herself and her advocates from the beginning of July to the end of November at which we are now arrived, not one appears to me for an instant tenable. Of all the |
