The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume X Part 18

With the powerful engine into which we are transforming the German army one does not make an attack. If I were to come before you today, on the a.s.sumption that conditions were different from what I believe they are, and said, "We are considerably menaced by France and Russia; it is to be expected that we shall be attacked, and as a diplomat, believing my military information in these matters to be correct, I am convinced that it is better for us to have our defense consist of a bold attack, and to strike the first blow now;" and if I added: "We can more easily wage an aggressive war, and I, therefore, am asking the Reichstag for an appropriation of a milliard, or half a milliard, marks to engage in a war against our two neighbors,"--then I do not know, gentlemen, whether you would have enough confidence in me to grant my request, but I hope you would not have it.

But, if you had, it would not satisfy me. If we Germans wish to wage a war with the full effect of our national strength, it must be a war which satisfies all who take part in it, all who sacrifice anything for it, in short the whole nation. It must be a national war, a war carried on with the enthusiasm of 1870, when we were foully attacked.

I still remember the ear splitting, joyful shouts in the station at Koln. It was the same all the way from Berlin to Koln, in Berlin itself. The waves of popular approval bore us into the war, whether or no we wished it. That is the way it must be, if a popular force like ours is to show what it can do. It will, however, be very difficult to prove to the provinces and the imperial states and their inhabitants that the war is unavoidable, and has to be. People will ask: "Are you so sure? Who can tell?" In short, when we make an attack, the whole weight of all imponderables, which weigh far heavier than material weights, will be on the side of our opponents whom we have attacked.

France will be bristling with arms way down to the Pyrenees. The same will take place everywhere. A war into which we are not borne by the will of the people will be waged, to be sure, if it has been declared by the const.i.tuted authorities who deemed it necessary; it will even be waged pluckily, and possibly victoriously, after we have once smelled fire and tasted blood, but it will lack from the beginning the nerve and enthusiasm of a war in which we are attacked. In such a one the whole of Germany from Memel to the Alpine Lakes will flare up like a powder mine; it will be bristling with guns, and no enemy will dare to engage this _furor teutonicus_ which develops when we are attacked.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANTON VON WERNER WILLIAM I ON HIS DEATHBED]

We cannot afford to lose this factor of preeminence even if many military men--not only ours but others as well--believe that today we are superior to our future opponents. Our own officers believe this to a man, naturally. Every soldier believes this. He would almost cease to be a useful soldier if he did not wish for war, and did not believe that we would be victorious in it. If our opponents by any chance are thinking that we are pacific because we are afraid of how the war may end, they are mightily mistaken. We believe as firmly in our victory in a just cause as any foreign lieutenant in his garrison, after his third gla.s.s of champagne, can believe in his, and we probably do so with greater certainty. It is not fear, therefore, which makes us pacific, but the consciousness of our strength. We are strong enough to protect ourselves, even if we should be attacked at a less favorable moment, and we are in a position to let divine providence determine whether a war in the meanwhile may not become unnecessary after all.

I am, therefore, not in favor of any kind of an aggressive war, and if war could result only from our attack--somebody must kindle a fire, we shall not kindle it. Neither the consciousness of our strength, which I have described, nor our confidence in our treaties, will prevent us from continuing our former endeavors to preserve peace. In this we do not permit ourselves to be influenced by annoyances or dislikes. The threats and insults, and the challenges, which have been made have, no doubt, excited also with us a feeling of irritation, which does not easily happen with Germans, for they are less p.r.o.ne to national hatred than any other nation. We are, however, trying to calm our countrymen, and we shall work for peace with our neighbors, especially with Russia, in the future as well as in the past. When I say especially with Russia, I express the opinion that France is offering us no a.s.surances of success in our endeavors. I will, however, not say that these endeavors are of no use. We shall never pick a quarrel, nor ever attack France; and in the many little incidents which the liking of our neighbors for spying and bribing has occasioned we have always brought about a very courteous and amicable settlement. I should consider it criminal if we were to enflame a great national war for such bagatelles. These are instances when one should say: "The cleverer of the two will yield."

I am referring, therefore, especially to Russia, and here I have the same confidence of success which I expressed a year ago, and which this liberal sheet printed in such large type, without any "running after," or as a German paper very vulgarly called it, "Kow-towing" to Russia. That time has pa.s.sed. We no longer sue for love, either in France or in Russia! The Russian press and the Russian public opinion have shown the door to an old powerful and reliable friend, which we were. We do not force ourselves on anybody. We have tried to reestablish the old intimate relations, but we are running after n.o.body. This does not prevent us, however, from observing the treaty-rights which Russia has with us; on the contrary, it is an incentive to us to do so.

These treaty rights comprise some which not all our friends recognize as such. I mean the rights concerning Bulgaria which we won for Russia in the Congress of Berlin, and which were not contested until 1885.

There is no question for me, who was instrumental in preparing the congressional decisions, and who joined in signing them, that all of us were of the opinion at that time that Russia should have a predominating influence in Bulgaria, after the latter had renounced East Roumelia, and she herself had given the modest satisfaction of reducing by 800,000 souls the extent of the territory under her influence until it included only about three million people.

Following this interpretation of the Congress, Russia until 1885 appointed the prince, a close relative of the imperial house, of whom at that time n.o.body believed, or could believe, that he would wish to be anything but a faithful adherent of the Russian policy. Russia nominated the minister of war and a great many officers; in short it was governing in Bulgaria. There was no doubt of this. The Bulgarians, or some of them, or the prince--I do not know which--were not satisfied with it. A _coup d'etat_ took place--a defection from Russia. Thus an actual condition has ensued which we are not called upon to remedy by a recourse to arms, but which cannot in theory alter the rights which Russia took home from the Congress of Berlin. Whether there will be difficulties, if Russia should wish to procure her rights by force, I do not know. We shall neither support nor counsel violent means, nor do I believe that they are being contemplated--I am quite sure they are not. If, however, Russia should try her luck along diplomatic lines, possibly by suggesting the intercession of the Sultan, the suzerain of Bulgaria, I deem it the duty of a loyal German policy to cling to the decisions of the Congress of Berlin, and to interpret them as all of us, without an exception, interpreted them at that time. The public feeling of the Bulgarians can alter nothing in this, so far as I am concerned. Bulgaria, the tiny little country between the Danube and the Balkans is not an object of sufficient size, I a.s.sure you, to attach to it any importance, or to push Europe for its sake into a war, from Moscow to the Pyrenees, from the North Sea to Palermo, when no one can foresee its end. After the war we would conceivably not even know for what we had been fighting.

I may, therefore, declare that the hostility against us shown in the Russian public opinion, and especially in the Russian press, will not deter us from supporting, at Russia's request, any diplomatic steps she may take to regain her influence in Bulgaria. I intentionally say, at her request. Formerly we have, at times, endeavored to fulfil her wishes when they had been only confidentially suggested, but we have seen that some Russian papers immediately tried to prove that these very steps of the German diplomacy had been the most inimical to Russia. They actually attacked us for having fulfilled the wishes of Russia even before they had been expressed. We did this also in the Congress of Berlin; but it will not happen again. If Russia will officially request us to support with the Sultan, as suzerain of Bulgaria, the steps which she may take in her desire to reestablish in Bulgaria conditions according to the decisions of the Congress, I shall not hesitate to advise His Majesty the Emperor to do so. Our sense of loyalty to our neighbor demands this, for we should cherish neighborly relations with him, let the present feelings be what they may. Together we should protect the monarchical inst.i.tutions which are common to both of us, and set our faces, in the interest of order, against all the opponents of it in Europe. Russia's monarch, moreover, fully understands that these are the duties of the allied monarchs. If the Emperor of Russia should find that the interests of his great empire of one hundred million people demand war, he will wage it, I do not doubt. But I do not believe that these interests can possibly demand a war against us, nor do I believe that these interests demand war at the present time at all.

To sum up: I do not believe in an immediate interruption of peace, and I ask you to discuss this bill independently of such a thought or apprehension, looking upon it as a means of making the great strength which G.o.d has placed in the German nation fully available. If we do not need all the troops, it is not necessary to summon them. We are trying to avoid the contingency when we shall need them.

This attempt is as yet made rather difficult for us by the threatening newspaper articles in the foreign press, and I should like to admonish these foreign editors to discontinue such threats. They do not lead anywhere. The threats which we see made--not by the governments, but by the press--are really incredibly stupid, when we stop to reflect that the people making them imagine they could frighten the proud and powerful German empire by certain intimidating figures made by printer's ink and shallow words. People should not do this. It would then be easier for us to be more obliging to our two neighbors. Every country after all is sooner or later responsible for the windows which its press has smashed. The bill will be rendered some day, and will consist of the ill-feeling of the other country. We are easily influenced--perhaps too easily--by love and kindness, but quite surely never by threats! We Germans fear G.o.d, and naught else in the world!

It is this fear of G.o.d which makes us love and cherish peace. If in spite of this anybody breaks the peace, he will discover that the ardent patriotism of 1813, which called to the standards the entire population of Prussia--weak, small, and drained to the marrow as it then was--has today become the common property of the whole German nation. Attack the German nation anywhere, and you will find it armed to a man, and every man with the firm belief in his heart: G.o.d will be with us.

MOUNT THE GUARDS AT THE WARTHE AND THE VISTULA!

September 16, 1894

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND VON MACH, PH.D.

[On September 16, 1894, when Bismarck was no longer chancellor, 2,200 Germans from the province of Posen appeared in Varzin to thank him for his devoted work in the service of the national idea, and to gather courage from him in their fight against the Polish propaganda which had gained strength under the new regime at court. The aged farm-manager, Mr. Kennemann, was the leader and spokesman of the visitors.]

Gentleman! First I must ask your indulgence, since for two days I have been upset by an unpolitical enemy called lumbago, an old acquaintance of mine for sixty years. I hope to get the better of him soon, and then to be able to stand again fully erect. At present, I must confess, I am hampered by him.

I begin by replying to the words of the previous speaker with thanks for the honor done me, addressing myself first of all to him, but then also to you. The previous speaker is as old as I. We were both born in 1815, and different walks of life have brought us together again here in Varzin after almost eighty years. The meeting gives me great pleasure, although I have not run my course as safe and sound as Mr.

Kennemann. When I claim to be an invalid of hard work, he may perhaps claim the same. But his work was possibly healthier than mine, this being the difference between the farmer and the diplomat. The mode of life of the latter is less healthy and more nerve-racking. To begin with, then, I am grateful to you, gentlemen, and I should be even more grateful, if we were all to put on our hats. I have lost in the course of years nature's own protection, but I cannot well cover my head if you do not do the same.

I thank you that you have spared no exertion to show your national sentiments in this way. The exertion was considerable, a night in the train, a second night on the way back, insufficient meals, and inconveniently crowded cars. The fact that you have stood all this and were not deterred by it attests the strength of your national feeling, which impelled you to bear witness to it here. That you did it here greatly honors me, and I recognize in it your appreciation of my part in the work of establis.h.i.+ng the conditions which we are enjoying in Germany today, after years of disunion. These conditions may be imperfect, but "the best is the enemy of the good." At the time when we shaped these conditions we never asked: "What may we wish?" but "What must we have!" This moderation in our demands for union was one of the most important preliminaries of success. By following this path we have reached the results which have strengthened the pledge that your home will remain united with the German empire and the kingdom of Prussia. The proportion, in the meanwhile, of Germans in the foundation of our structure to the less reliable--I will not say loose--Polish element has become decidedly more favorable for the Germans. Our national figures are forty-eight million Germans and two million Poles; and in such a community the wishes of the two million cannot be decisive for the forty-eight million, as must be apparent, especially in an age when political decisions are dependent on a majority vote as a last resort. The forces which guarantee the union of these territories are strong enough both in the parliament and in the army to a.s.sure it, and no one can doubt that the proper authorities are ready to use these forces at the right time. No one mistakes the meaning, when the announcement is made from the highest quarters: "Ere we shall yield again Alsace, our army will have to be annihilated" (and words to this effect have been spoken). The same thing is true, to an even stronger degree, of our eastern frontier. We can spare neither, Posen even less than Alsace, and we shall fight, as the Emperor has said, to the last man, before we renounce Alsace, this protection of our Southern states. Yet Munich and Stuttgart are not more endangered by a hostile position in Stra.s.sburg and Alsace than Berlin would be endangered by a hostile position near the Oder. It may, therefore, be readily a.s.sumed that we shall remain firm in our determination and sacrifice, if it should become necessary, our last man and the last coin in our pockets for the defense of the German eastern frontier as it has existed for eighty years. And this determination will suffice to render the union between your province and the empire as positively a.s.sured as things can be in this world.

We confined our demands to what was necessary for our existence and what enabled the big European nation which we are to draw a free breath. We did not include territories where German used to be spoken, when this had been largely due to a propaganda of the German courts.

More German used to be spoken in the East, North-east, and elsewhere than today. Remember our ally, Austria, and how familiar German was there in the days of Joseph II. and of the Empress Maria Theresa, when German was a greater force in parts of Hungary than it is or can be today. But, for everything we gave up in the shape of a linguistic and outward union, we have found rich compensation in the intensity of a closer union. If the older gentlemen will think back to the time before Emperor William I., they will realize that the lack of love among the various German tribes was much greater at that time than it is today. We have made notable progress in this direction, and, when we compare the unequivocal expressions of opinion from Bavaria and Saxony today with the familiar sentiments of earlier times, we must say that Germany, which for the past one hundred years had lagged behind the other people of Europe in national development, has rapidly caught up with them. Forty years ago we were far behind all other nations in national feeling and love of one another. Today we are no longer behind them.

Our fellow-countrymen from the Rhine, from the Alpine lake and the Saxon Elbe are attached to one another in affectionate sympathy, not only when they meet abroad, but also at home. A united people has been created in a remarkably short time. This proves that the medical cure which we employed, although it was of blood and iron, lanced only a sore, which had come to a head long ago, and that it gave us speedy comfort and good health. G.o.d grant that the cure will be lasting and subject to no change. How far reaching it is has been proved by the testimonials which I have received since I gave up my office. They have come from all people,--from Baden, Bavaria, Saxony, Suabia, Hessen, and from all the districts of Prussia outside the provinces of Frederick the Great. These entirely voluntary manifestations, which were arranged by no one, and which not infrequently came to me at rather inconvenient and inopportune times, have impressed me with the existence of national harmony. Every one of them has given pleasure to my patriotic heart, and has borne witness to a common feeling existing in all German races--this much I wished to say concerning the stability of the political and national union of your province today.

We often sing "Firm is the stand of the faithful guards on the Rhine,"

but they are standing equally firm at the Warthe and the Vistula. We cannot spare an acre of land in either direction, for the sake of principle if for nothing else. The previous speaker referred to the attempts which had been made, as a result of the movement of 1848, to shake loose the union in which we were then living in Prussia and Germany, and to disregard our boundary lines. These attempts of satisfying the wishes of our Polish neighbors ended with the action of the Prussian general von Colomb, who closed the gates of Posen to the Polish troops which, in response to promises made in Berlin, had been raised under the Prussian General von Willisen. We were obliged to conquer with Prussian troops, and in a b.l.o.o.d.y war, the army of the insurgents who fought bravely and honorably. I wish to add that even that war was not fought with the Polish people as such, but with the Polish n.o.bility and their following. I remember speaking to some Polish soldiers of the 19th regiment, I believe, in Erfurt at that time, that is in 1850, who called the opponents only "_Komorniks"_--the Polish word for "contract-laborers." We should, then, not deceive ourselves into believing that even today the number of those who are opposed to the two races in Posen and in West Prussia living together peacefully is as large as statistics may claim.

This brings me to the second point touched upon by the previous speaker, the two races living together peacefully. I believe that many of you have in your employ laborers and servants who speak Polish, and that you are of the opinion that no danger comes from this lower social stratum of the population. Living together with them is possible, and no disturbance of the peace starts with them. They do not promote any movements hostile to us. I do not even mention the fact that they are possibly of another race than the n.o.bility, whose immigration into the Slavic districts is lost in the obscure past. The statistical numbers, therefore, of those opposed to a peaceful communion of both races must be lessened by the large number of laborers and farmers. The lower cla.s.ses are, in the bulk, satisfied with the Prussian government, which may not be perfect always, but which treats them with greater justice than they were accustomed to in the times of the Polish republic of n.o.bles. They are satisfied with this. It was not part of my programme that the commission on colonization should pay special attention to small holdings of German-speaking settlers. The Polish peasants are not dangerous, nor does it make any difference whether the laborers are Polish or German. The chief thing was to create crown-lands among the big estates, and to rent them to men whom the State could permanently influence. The desire for quick sales and colonization emanated from other competent quarters than myself. It was impossible for me to supervise these measures after I had instigated them.

The difficulties which I met in the forty years of my Polish diplomacy did not start with the ma.s.ses of Polish laborers and peasants, but were, I believe, occasioned largely, if not exclusively, by the Polish n.o.bility with the a.s.sistance of the Polish clergy. Perhaps this latter term is too narrow, for I know of instances when German priests a.s.sisted in the Polish propaganda for the sake of peace. This is a peculiarity of our race--and I do not exactly wish to condemn it--that we often place our religion above our nationality. The very opposite is true of our opponents, the Poles and the French people, who regard their nationality more highly than their religion. We are suffering from this habit. We possess, however, a certain material counter-weight, provided the State government unreservedly supports the German element. The religious element has great weight in the family circle and among women, especially the Polish women, whom I have always greatly admired. The minister has a freer access to them than the local governor or the judge. There will, however, always be a powerful weight in the scales, when the Prussian government exercises its influence with firm determination and so clearly that doubts for the future are impossible. _Vestigia terrent!_ we may say, when with 1848, no--not 1848, I mean 1831-32--the attention paid to the Polish nation became almost more p.r.o.nounced in Germany than that given to the German element. Since then we have surely been able to register progress in our politics. Now I must ask your indulgence for a moment on account of my lumbago. (Voices: Sit down, Your Highness.) Sitting down does not help me. I know this visitor from years of experience. I was speaking of the possibility of having the two races living peacefully side by side. This is not impossible, for in Switzerland we see three different nationalities--the German, Italian, and French Swiss--deliberate quietly and without bitterness on matters of joint interest. In Belgium we see the Germanic Flemish form a united State with the Gallic Walloons, and we perceive that it is possible under circ.u.mstances to live peacefully together even with the Poles, when we remember East Prussia, where the Polish Masures, the Lithuanians, and the Germans work together harmoniously. Because n.o.body has incited the people there, no national ill feeling has appeared among them. It is true, to be sure, that the Catholic priest, with his peculiar interests, is unknown there. But look at your neighbors in Upper Silesia. Have the two races not lived there in peaceful communion for centuries, although the religious differences exist there also? What is it, then, that Silesia has not, and that has made it possible for us to live there, through centuries, in religious harmony? I am sorry to have to say it, it is the Polish n.o.bility and the clergy of the Polish propaganda. The Polish n.o.bles are, no doubt, very influential--more so with the Poles than the Germans--but the statistical figures are much larger than the actual number of our aggressive Polish opponents with whom we have to count.

The n.o.bles are thinking of the time when they were all-powerful, and they cannot give up the memory of conditions when they ruled the king as well as the peasants. The Polish n.o.bles, however, are surely too highly educated to believe that the conditions of the old Polish republic of n.o.bles could ever return, and I should be astonished if the Polish peasants knew the history of Poland so badly that they did not recoil from the possibility of a return to the old state of affairs. The peasants must say to themselves that a "wet year," as the farmers put it, would be their lot if the n.o.bles regained their power.

Among the national-Polish representatives that are elected, you generally meet only n.o.blemen. At least I cannot remember having seen a Polish farmer as a representative in the Reichstag or in the diet.

Compare this with the election results in German districts. I do not even know whether there are Polish burghers in our sense of the word.

The middle cla.s.ses in the Polish cities are poorly developed.

Consequently, when we reduce our opponents to their proper size, we grow more courageous in our own determination; and I should be very glad if I could encourage those who on their part are adding to the encouragement of the Polish n.o.bles. I feel, gentlemen, that I am of one mind with you, who have traveled the hard road hither. I have no influence with other elements, but we shall not give up hope in spite of all vicissitudes.

The address of the previous speaker also referred to vicissitudes and changes. These changes have characterized our entire Polish policy, from 1815 till today. They took place whenever high Polish families gained influence at court. You all know the Radziwill family and its influence at the court of Frederick William IV. If we could make a mental test of the popular feeling of 1831 and of today, we should find that the conviction has greatly increased that we have German fellow-countrymen in the Grand duchy of Posen. The former and, I am tempted to say, childish cult of the Poles as I knew it in my childhood is no longer possible. Then we were taught Polish songs in our music lessons together with the Ma.r.s.eillaise, to be sure. The Polish n.o.bleman, therefore, than whom G.o.d never created anything more reactionary, was here thrown into one pot with the French revolution, and liberalism was coupled with the cause of the Poles, because we were lacking in political perspicacity. Such feelings were ingrained in our citizens at that time. I am thinking especially of the citizens of Berlin. If today you ask the opinion of your forty-eight million fellow-countrymen, and compare their views and those of the bulk of the German army with the bugbear which had found lodging in German hearts at the time of Platen's Polish songs, you surely cannot despair of further development. We may, you must agree, register progress, although it is slow and there are lapses. It is like climbing a sandy hill or walking in the lava of Mount Vesuvius. One often glides back, but on the whole one is advancing. Your position will grow the stronger the more vigorously developed our sense of nationality will become. I ask of you, do not despair if there are clouds in the sky, especially in this rainy year which has saddened the farmers. They will disappear, and the union of the Warthe and the Vistula with Germany is irrefragable.

For centuries we have existed without Alsace-Lorraine, but no one yet has dared to think of what our existence would be if today a new kingdom of _Poland_ were founded. Formerly it was a pa.s.sive power.

Today it would be an active enemy supported by the rest of Europe. As long as it would not have gained possession of Danzig, Thorn, and West Prussia, and I know not what else the excitable Polish mind might crave, it would always be the ally of our enemies. It indicates, therefore, insufficient political skill or political ignorance if we rely in any way on the Polish n.o.bles for the safety of our eastern frontier, or if we think that we can win them to fight anywhere for German possessions, sword in hand. This is an Utopian idea. The only thing which we and you, gentlemen, can do under present conditions, and which we can learn from the Poles, is to cling to one another. The Poles, too, have parties, and used to show this even more unfortunately than we, but all their parties disappear as soon as a national question is broached. I wish the same would come to be true of us, and that in national questions we would belong primarily, not to a party, but to the nation. Let us be of as divergent opinions as we choose, but when in our eastern provinces the question arises: "German or Polish," then let the party feuds be laid aside until, as the Berliners say, "After nine o'clock." Now is the time to fight and to stand together. This is just as it is in military matters--and I am glad to see among you many who have experience in such things.

Before joining an attack in war we do not ask: Shall we follow our progressive or our reactionary neighbor? We advance when the drum beats the signal, and so we should in national affairs forget all party differences, and form a solid phalanx hurling all our spears, reactionary, progressive, and despotic alike, against the enemy.

If we agree on this--and the dangers of the future are compelling us to do so--we shall win our women and children for the same strict sense of nationality. And if our women are with us, and our youths, we are saved for all time. This is one of our present tasks, to give a national education to our children. I am confident that the German women possess all the necessary qualifications for this task. I shall ask you, therefore, to join me in a toast: The German Women in the Grandduchy of Posen! And may the German idea take an ever firmer hold in your country!

LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR AND THE EMPIRE!

April 1,1895

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND VON MACH, PH.D.

[The eightieth birthday of Prince Bismarck was celebrated as a national holiday everywhere in Germany. Not less than 5,250 youths from the universities and academies visited Friedrichsruh on April 1 to bear witness, before the "old man" of Germany, to their love for the emperor and the empire. After receiving a delegation from the faculties of all the universities, Bismarck addressed the students as follows:]

Gentlemen! I have just heard from the lips of your teachers, the leaders of higher education, an appreciation of my past, which means much to me. From your greeting, I infer a promise for the future, and this means even more for a man of my years than his love of approbation. You will be able, at least many of you, to live according to the sentiments which your presence here today reveals, and to do so to the middle of the next century, while I have long been condemned to inactivity and belong to the days that are past. I find consolation in this observation, for the German is not so const.i.tuted that he could entirely dismiss in his old age what in his youth inspired him. Forty and sixty years hence you will not hold exactly the same views as today, but the seed planted in your young hearts by the reign of Emperor William I. will bear fruit, and, even when you grow old, your att.i.tude will ever be German-national because it is so today--whatever form our inst.i.tutions may have taken in the meanwhile. We do not wilfully dismiss from our hearts the love of national sentiments; we do not lose them when we emigrate. I know instances of hundreds of thousands of Germans from America, South Africa, and Australia who are today bound to the fatherland with the same enthusiasm which carried many of them to the war.

We had to win our national independence in difficult wars. The preparation, the prologue, was the Holstein war. We had to fight with Austria for a settlement; no court of law could have given us a decree of separation; we had to fight. That we were facing a French war after our victory at Sadowa could not remain in doubt for anyone who knew the conditions of Europe. It was, however, desirable not to wage this war too soon nor before we had garnered to some extent the fruits of our North-German union. After the war had been waged everybody here was saying that within five years we should have to wage the next war.

This was to be feared, it is true, but I have ever since considered it to be my duty to prevent it. We Germans had no longer any reason for war. We had what we needed. To fight for more, from a l.u.s.t of conquest and for the annexation of countries which were not necessary for us, always appeared to me like an atrocity; I am tempted to say like a Bonapartistic and foreign atrocity, alien to the Germanic sense of justice.

Consequently since we rebuilt and enlarged our house according to our needs, I have always been a man of peace, nor have I shrunk from small sacrifices. The strong man can afford to yield at times. Neither the Caroline Islands nor Samoa were worth a war, however much stress I have always laid on our colonial development. We did not stand in need of glory won in battles, nor of prestige. This indeed is the superiority of the German character over all others, that it is satisfied when it can acknowledge its own worth, and has no need of recognition, authority, or privilege. It is self-sufficient. This is the course I have steered, and in politics it is much easier to say what one should avoid than to say what one should do. Certain principles of honesty and courage forbid one to do certain things, just as the access to certain fields is interdicted in the army maneuvers. But the decision as to what has to be done is a very different matter, and no one can be sure of it beforehand, for politics are a task which can be compared only to the navigation of unknown waters. One does not know what the weather will be or how the currents will flow, nor what storms will be raging. There is in politics this additional factor of uncertainty that one is largely dependent on the decisions of others on whom one has counted and who have failed. One never can act with complete independence. And, when our friends whose a.s.sistance we need, although we cannot guarantee it, change their minds, our whole plan has failed. Positive enterprises are, therefore, very difficult in politics, and when they succeed you should be grateful to G.o.d who has given His blessing, and not find fault with details which one or the other may regret, but accept the situation as G.o.d has made it. For man cannot create or direct the stream of time. He can sail on it and steer his craft with more or less skill, be stranded and s.h.i.+pwrecked, or make a favorable port.

Since we now have made a favorable port, as I conclude from the predominant although not unanimous opinion of my countrymen, whose approval is all we have worked for, let us be satisfied, and let us keep and cherish what we have won in an Emperor and an empire as it is, and not as some individuals may wish it should be, with other inst.i.tutions, and a little bit more of this or that religious or social detail that they may have at heart. Let us be careful to keep what we have, lest we lose it because we do not know how to appreciate it. Germany once was a powerful empire under the Carolingians, the Saxons, and the Hohenstaufens, and when she lost her place, five, yes six hundred years pa.s.sed before she regained the use of her legs--if I may say so. Political and geological developments are equally slow.

Layers are deposited one on the other, forming new banks and new mountains. But I should like to ask especially the young gentlemen: Do not yield too much to the German love of criticism! Accept what G.o.d has given us, and what we have toiled to garner, while the rest of Europe--I cannot say attacked us, but ominously stood at attention. It was not easy. If we had been cited before the European Council of Elders before our French affairs were settled, we should not have fared nearly so well; and it was my task to avoid this if I possibly could. It is natural that not everything which everybody wished could be obtained under these conditions, and I mention this only to claim the indulgence of those who are perfectly justified in expecting more, and possibly in striving for more. But, above everything, do not be premature, and do not act in haste. Let us cling for the present to what we have.

The men who made the biggest sacrifices that the empire might be born were undoubtedly the German princes, not excluding the King of Prussia. My old master hesitated long before he voluntarily yielded his independence to the empire. Let us then be thankful to the reigning houses who made sacrifices for the empire which after the full thousand years of German history must have been hard for them to make; and let us be thankful to science, and those who cultivate her, for having kept alive on their hearths the fire of German unity to the time when new fuel was added and it flamed up and provided us with satisfying light and warmth.

I would then--and you will say I am an old, conservative man--compress what I have to say into these words: Let us keep above everything the things we have, before we look for new things, nor be afraid of those people who begrudge them to us. In Germany struggles have existed always, and the party schisms of today are naught but the echoes of the old German struggle between the n.o.ble families and the trade unions in the cities, and between those who had and those who had not in the peasant wars, in the religious wars, and in the thirty years'

war. None of these far reaching fissures, which I am tempted to call geological, can disappear at once. And should we not be indulgent with our opponents, if we ourselves do not desist from fighting? Life is a struggle everywhere in nature, and without inner struggles we end by being like the Chinese, and become petrified. No struggle, no life!

Only, in every fight where the national question arises, there must be a rallying point. For us this is the empire, not as it may seem to be desirable, but as it is, the empire and the Emperor, who represents it. That is why I ask you to join me in wis.h.i.+ng well to the Emperor and the empire. I hope that in 1950 all of you who are still living will again respond with contented hearts to the toast

LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR AND THE EMPIRE!