Greater Germany

“ See chart of Civilization in Six Centuries, "Who, When, and What."
CHAPTER VIII.
It was not alone in Germany that the old was vanishing. The movement in that country was part of a general condition prevailing in England, France, and Spain; all with the same tendency—the passing of the power from many small despotisms to one greater one. It was an advance, although a slow one, in the path of progress. Feudalism—that newfangled system which had so tried the soul of Duke Welf in the ninth century—was dissolving. ”

“ The smaller princes of Germany, partly to insure to themselves a greater independence against the supremacy of Austria and Prussia, or against the influence of the nobility of their own States, partly in order to consolidate into a whole the disconnected provinces united under their rule by the Congress of Vienna, one after the other granted constitutions of a more or less liberal character. They could do so without any danger to themselves ”

“ In its earlier periods it covers the greater part of Europe, and does not return exclusively to Germany until after France, Spain, England and the Italian States have been founded. Thus, even before the fall of the Roman Empire, it becomes the main trunk out of which branch the histories of nearly all European nations, and must of necessity be studied as the connecting link between ancient and modern history. The records of no other race throw so much light upon the development of all civilized lands during a period of fifteen hundred years. ”

“ But its determination to attach them to the new German Empire, and to make that Empire the leading industrial State of the Continent, has had a complete triumph. So far as education, technical training, research, and enlightened laws can make a nation great, Germany is surely on the high road to national and industrial supremacy.
It is a strange contrast that meets our eyes if we look back to the years before the advent of King William and Bismarck to power. In the dark days of the previous reign Germany was weak, divided, and helpless. ”

“ Had not the uprising of the peasants been shamefully betrayed by the leaders of German culture and civilization, the development of the nation would, at that time, have already assumed a normal form, and not only would Germany be the equal of the other civilized nations, but as the first-born modern nation, would have held the roost prominent place among them. ”

“ But modern Germany is a land of incongruities and contradictions, a wild confusion of swirling cross-currents. The increase of population, the checking of emigration, the amazing prosperity, the extension of commerce, the demand for territorial expansion, would indicate a sound physical constitution and a healthful growth. ”

“ The general situation of the German Empire in the period before the war had become continually more brilliant, and for that very reason continually more difficult from the point of view of foreign politics. Unprecedented progress in industry, commerce, and world traffic had made Germany prosperous. The curve of our development tended steadily upward. ”

“ Germany is become united and powerful, and the longing of our youth to see the German name again respected by land and sea has been fulfilled. Who would find fault with such an achievement? But go back in thought to the divided, powerless, provincial Germany of our youthful days—passing as it were from the cold splendor of the imperial city into the narrow streets of some old town in Middle Germany, with their overhanging gables, and the house-fronts hung with grape-vine and ivy—is there not something lacking in the noisy Present, with all its glittering and dazing magnificence? ”

“ In Germany, notwithstanding the greatest division, the most peculiar separation of religion and even of races, yet nevertheless that great German empire is coming forward as a monument of the civilization of the future world, and as the centre of all Europe against any form of Oriental barbarism. ”

“ A moment's reflection will show the vast difference between the position of Germany, with which I was dealing, and that of England to-day. While Germany, owing to her rapidly expanding population and vast economic development, is impelled to look for means of expansion in a world which is already for the most part parcelled out, we, on the other hand, do not require or seek another square mile of dominion. Our object must be to develop the resources of our Empire, commercially, industrially, and socially. ”

“ Filled with pride in her own achievements, believing herself to be, beyond all rivalry, the greatest nation in the world, already the leader, and destined to be the controller, of civilisation, Germany could not bring herself to accept a second place in the imperial sphere. ”

“ I stayed upwards of a month with Henry, and then came hither über Paris, where I stayed ten days. I have been here two and a half weeks, taking the baths, and enjoying the feeling of the strong, calm, successful, new German civilization all about me. Germany is great, and no mistake! But what a contrast, in the well-set-up, well-groomed, smart-looking German man of today, and his rather clumsily drest, dingy, and unworldly-looking father of forty years ago! ”

“ The Emperor William concluded his proclamation to the German People with these words: "May God permit us, and our successors to the Imperial crown, to give at all times increase to the German Empire, not by the conquests of war, but by the goods and gifts of peace, in the path of national prosperity, freedom and morality!" After the end of the war was assured, he left Paris, and passed in a swift march of triumph through Germany to Berlin, where the popular enthusiasm was extravagantly exhibited. ”

“ I know that Germany is an ugly beast ready to jump at the throat of civilization the moment the word is said, the moment the leash is slipped. I know how they are working here, for that one end, blood and conquest and booty, with all their might, their energy, their strength. I know Germans. They believe. They obey. They think that whatever is told them by their master is the truth. ”

“ Nothing is more evident in the history of Germany, from first to last, than the opposition of the ruling princes to any close political union of a national character, but it was seldom so selfishly and shamelessly manifested as in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. ”

“ From 1871 onwards Prussianized Germany, by far the best-educated, and industrially and commercially the most progressive, country in Europe, with the enormous advantage of her central position, was, consciously and unconsciously, making ready for her next advance. ”

“ And yet, on the basis of my long experience, I feel inclined to assert that Germany as a whole, in spite of its collective intellectuality, is in its practical social life far behind the rest of the civilized nations of Europe. ”

“ In several ways Germany has excellence and possibilities of great service to humanity. In original research and invention, in applied science and in science itself, in scholarship, and in social and industrial development and organization, the German has shown himself to be a pioneer. ”

“ Thus ignobly fell the noblest of the ancient Germans, the man whose patriotism saved the realm of the Teutonic tribes from becoming a province of the empire of Rome. Had not Hermann lived, the history of Europe might have pursued a different course, and the final downfall of the colossus of the south been long averted, Germany acting as its bulwark of defence instead of becoming the nursery of its foes. ”

“ Can any one interest himself in this German Empire? Where is the new thought? Is it only a new combination of power? All the worse, if it does not know its own mind. Peace and laisser aller are not types of politics for which I have any respect. Ruling, and helping the highest thoughts to victory—the only things that can make me interested in Germany. England's small-mindedness is the great danger now on earth. ”

“ England blocked the way to the growth of Germany from a European into a World-power; Germany, to preserve intact for German culture the surplus of the growing population, must be a World-power or perish. ”

“ What will probably happen is a keen struggle between the classes and the masses for the mastery, but until it is decided in favour of the latter, the Germany of the future will continue to be the Germany of to-day. ”

“ It is really no paradox, therefore, to say that an insight into domestic manners in Germany, will be best acquired in public—where all classes, high, middle, and lower orders “live and move and have their being!” ”

“ I was taught, as every child within the German Empire is taught, to believe that Germany is above and before all the nations of the world, and that, in the brief life of this earth, nothing else but German national interests matter to its people. ”

“ The old Germany was a Germany of small, self-governing States, of small political power; the new Germany is a 'great' Germany, with a new ideal and spirit which comes of victory and military and political power, of the reshaping of political and social institutions which the retention of conquered territory demands, its militarization, regimentation, centralization, and unchallenged authority; the cultivation of the spirit of domination, the desire to justify and to frame a philosophy to buttress it. ”

“ The normal German is an admirable citizen, quiet, peaceable, thrifty, industrious, faithful, efficient, and affectionate to the verge of sentimentality. He, and not the Junker, has made Germany the most efficient political State in the world. ”

“ The German Empire is the clearinghouse, the adjutant, the executive officer, the official clerk, the representative in many social, financial, military, and diplomatic capacities of Germany; but it is not, and never for a moment should be confused with, what all Germans love, and what it has cost them blood and tears and great sacrifices to bring into the circle of the nations, the German Fatherland! ”

“ I agree that no one man can be credited with the astonishing expansion of Germany in all directions in the last thirty years; but so interwoven are the advice and influence, the ambitions and plans, of the German Emperor with the progress of the German people, that this one personality shares his country’s successes as no single individual in any other country can be said to do. ”

“ Why must Germany be victorious, why must she have her place in the sun, why must her frontiers be extended, why is all opposition to Germany shameful, not to say devilish, why must Germany become a world-empire, why ought Germany and not Great Britain to become the great Colonial Power? Why, because it is through the medium of Germanism that the world is to be healed; it is upon Germanism that the salvation of the world depends. ”

“ The great power and vigour of the German peoples, shown by their early history in Europe, had been broken up by the religious and other dissensions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It fell to Prussia to become the centre of organization for a new Germany. The rich human and social material of the German States—their literary, artistic, and scientific culture, their philosophy, their learning—clustered curiously enough round the hard and military nucleus of the North. ”

“ The power of Germany comes from the fact that her people have been workers as well as dreamers. The rapid increase of the population and development of the industrial and commercial prosperity of the empire have given the Germans a wholly justifiable economic foundation for their Weltpolitik. ”

“ We are intensely jealous of Germany, not only because the Germans outnumber us, and have a much larger and more diversified country than ours, and lie in the very heart and body of Europe, but because in the last hundred years, while we have fed on platitudes and vanity, they have had the energy and humility to develop a splendid system of national education, to toil at science and art and literature, to develop social organisation, to master and better our methods of business and industry, and to clamber above us in the scale of civilisation. ”

“ That period of thirty years’ havoc, in which the early civilization, and the noblest energies of Germany were destroyed, forms in history the great wall of separation between the ancient Germany, which in the middle age was the most powerful, flourishing, and wealthy country in Europe, and the new Germany of recent and happier times, which is now gradually recovering from her long exhaustion and general desolation, and rising again into light and life from the sepulchral darkness—the night of death, to which her ancient disputes had consigned her. ”

“ German education is open to grave indictment as regards the spirit and temper it has bred, but withal the Germans are an educated people, and an educated people knows how to employ its leisure.
The longer you live in the Occupied Area, the more sphinx-like the riddle it presents—the riddle of reconciling the behaviour of these decent, self-respecting people among whom you find yourself with the actions of that collective entity, Germany, who figures as the outcast of Europe. ”

“ While measures of the most far-reaching historical importance were thus being adopted in the State on which the future fate of Germany was to depend, and while revolution was being superseded by healthy progress, a German Empire of the first rank, the Empire of intellect, grew up in the domain of art and science, where German character and endeavour found the deepest and fullest expression. ”

“ During the Napoleonic wars Germany, as every one knows, was, generally speaking, in the grip of the French Imperial power. To follow the vicissitudes and fluctuations of fortune throughout Central Europe during these years lies outside our present purpose. ”