Prussia

“ I will annihilate this Prussia which dared to take up arms against me, and who knows whether this gallery of Prussian kings will not close with Frederick William III.? Nothing on earth is lasting, and sovereigns now-a-days fall from their thrones as over-ripe apples from trees. The crown of Prussia fell to the ground on the battle-fields of Jena and Auerstadt! ”

“ What Rome became, Prussia aspires to be. The spirit, the animus, of Prussia is military power. Travel in that kingdom,--everywhere are soldiers, military schools, camps, arsenals, fortresses, reviews. And this military spirit, evident during the last hundred years, has made the military classes arrogant, austere, mechanical, contemptuous. This spirit pervades the nation. It despises other nations as much as France did in the last century, or England after the wars of Napoleon. ”

“ And now that Prussia, with its vital Protestantism and free schools, proposes to undertake the reconstruction of Germany, and make a nation where there are now only the fragmentary possibilities of a great power, why, Prussia is a military despot, whose subjects must be either soldiers or slaves, and the young emperor at Vienna is indeed another Joseph, filled with the most tender solicitude for the welfare of the chosen German people. ”

“ We have always preferred to distinguish Germany from Prussia; we have found delight in the thought that there is a Munich as well as a Berlin, a Nietzsche as well as a Haeckel, a Rheinhard as well as a Bernhardi.... Today we witness the hegemony of Prussia, a hegemony political as well as spiritual, for the great war has crowned with triumph not only the Krupp guns but also the Prussian idea of efficiency and preciseness. ”

“ It is Prussia that bars the way in all these directions, Prussia, which, in itself not a nation but a military bureaucracy, a survival of the old territorial dynastic principle which the world has largely outgrown, has stamped its character and system upon the German people. ”

“ In no other country could a small state like Prussia spring out of a mere society of Knight Templars, and in less than two hundred years, take her place among the first powers of the globe. While the smaller states of the empire followed their indolent habits, and cultivated the dilettante tastes of their rulers, Prussia was perpetually sharpening her sword, carving out of her neighbours fresh slices of territory, and using one acquisition as a stepping-stone to another. ”

“ After three hundred years of disunion and hatreds, Prussia united their country by a cement of blood and iron, and in the last forty years has made out of her the most powerful nation on the continent of Europe. ”

“ With their matchless and ancient wealth of intellect they were wanting in the vigour of youthful political life. Prussia which formed itself into a kingdom in recent times exactly supplies this want. The Prussian Germans whose history during the last 200 years has been a history of vigorous struggles and unscrupulous annexations were exactly the people who could cement the scattered German races together with their young energy and vigour, into one great Empire. Germany represents the intellect, and Prussia the will of that great Empire. ”

“ Prussia's colours appeared nowhere. The two emperors were to settle the affairs of Europe. The King of Prussia was conquered and not wanted. Joy faded from the East Prussian faces.
"Our King is a good man," they said. "We do not find it good that he is so neglected."
The King himself looked neither to the left nor the right. He rode forward, his splendid figure outlined now against the sky, now hid by the soldiers. ”

“ It is on you, immoveable columns of the Prussian monarchy, that the destinies of the king and his august house will forever repose. Never will Prussia cease to exist, while your sons and your grandsons resemble you. ”

“ For Prussia has Prussianized Germany, and you do not begin to understand this question unless you realize that you are fighting Germany, that Germany is as united as we are and will fight as hard and all the harder, when she is pushed back into her own land, and there begins to see and suffer some—necessarily to suffer some part, though I hope not all—of the misery she has inflicted in Belgium, in France, and in Poland. ”

“ From the great elector's time until the thirty thousand picked troops from the crown-prince's army rode into the Champs Elysées in 1871 to typify the final and complete triumph of Berlin over Paris, Prussia has been, as she is to all appearance likely to remain, the most truly military nation of Europe, her people ready to make greater sacrifices than any other would to maintain a foremost position. ”

“ I answer, cast your eyes at the map of Europe, at the position of our country, at its component parts; follow the line of our borders, weigh the power of our neighbors, throw before all an enlightened glance on our history. It has pleased God to make Prussia strong by the sword of war from without, and by the sword of intellect from within ”

“ It was the curious fate of Prussia twice in little more than half a century to be attacked by a greatly superior force, and to wage on the first occasion the most glorious and on the second the most inglorious defensive war known to modern history. ”

“ Delenda est Prussia, understanding thereby not, of course, the inhabitants of Prussian territory as such, but Prussia as a State-system and as an independent Power in Europe, must be the watchword in the present crisis of every well-wisher of Humanity, Germany included. A united Germany, if that be insisted upon, by all means let there be—a federation of all the German peoples with its capital, for that matter, as of old, at Frankfurt-on-the-Main, but with no dominant State and, if possible, excluding Prussia altogether, but certainly as constituted at present. ”

“ In attempting to reread modern history in the light of that new interpretation of Prussian history, we are naturally driven to ask ourselves who is primarily responsible for that sinister influence which Prussia has exercised for the last two centuries. ”

“ Prussia opened her eyes to the new conditions of the age; set the schoolmaster at work among her children; made herself an example and a stimulus to all her neighbors. The Family which called itself Austria did otherwise. It was blind, and it preferred blindness. It read lessons in nothing but the Holy Alliance and the Treaty of Vienna. ”

“ Judge, then, the wisdom and the veracity of this Prussian gospel by what has happened since this War begun; put, above all, in juxtaposition the conflicting ideals of the Prussian system and the system of the great free Empire to which we belong, for whose defence our soldiers are shedding their precious blood. There isn't a true Dane, a true Pole, a true Frenchman, within the broad dominions of the German Empire, that doesn't in his heart long for the hour when the blood-stained vulture-eagle of Prussia is stretched helpless, with broken wings and battered beak, on the ground. ”

“ France distrusted Prussia, even as Austria, England, Russia, and Saxony distrusted and feared the adroit young adventurer, who in the last fifty years had placed himself firmly amongst the great powers of Europe, and was bold, brave, and wise enough to hold a powerful and self-sustained position in their circle. ”

“ This done, and done thoroughly, it was Prussia who experimented upon all Germany in the way in which the Hohenzollerns had experimented on Prussia; and being supported by the literary, artistic, and scientific elements of the German people, succeeded thus far, and might have ended by realizing their ambitious dream, had it not been for the interposition of circumstance which misled them in their choice of opportunity.
Thus latter-day Germany furnishes a remarkable instance of the remoulding of a whole nation by a dynasty. For the people has, in truth, in some essential respects been born anew. ”

“ Prussia, like a mongrel, would fly at the legs of Austria and Russia, catching them with the sack upon their shoulders, unless they untied it and tossed a morsel to her. These great powers take especial care to impose a protective duty on intellect; to let none enter the country, and none leave it, without a passport. ”

“ A conscription, a march, a bivouac, and a battle will form act the first. Then a victory; and a bulletin and an imperial edict, showing that Prussia, both by her language and geographical position, was intended by Providence to belong to France; that Prussians have no dearer wish than to be thrashed and taxed,—the honor of becoming a portion of the Grande Nation being an ample recompense for any misfortune.”
“And so it is, Monsieur,” broke in a bluff, hard-featured veteran, whose coarse and weather-beaten traits bespoke one risen from the ranks; “he is no Frenchman who says otherwise.” ”

“ The nobles of Prussia are always for war. The business men and manufacturers and shipowners desire an increasing field for their activities. The German colonies were uninhabitable by Europeans. All his life the glittering Emperor and his generals had planned and thought of war; and the Crown Prince, surrounded by his remarkable collection of relics and reminders of Napoleon, dreamed only of taking the lead in a successful war of conquest. ”

“ The German nation is a fighting unit under the dominion of Prussia, the greatest war state, not only of the empire, but of the world. Having welded Germany by the Franco-Prussian war into a nation with unified tariffs, transportation, currency, and monetary systems, Prussia has been able to point to the war as the cause of the phenomenal prosperity of Germany. ”

“ Prussia, acknowledged as an equal by the monarchies of Europe, stands forth without rival as the unquestioned leader of the northern Germany, and is biding her time until the hour shall strike, which will permit her to wrest from the House of Habsburg the leadership of the German people, and inherit from it the duty of defending the German Fatherland. ”

“ Prussia, which has imposed its will, as well as its methods of thought and life on all the rest of Germany, is undoubtedly a military nation.
More than one hundred and twenty-five years ago Mirabeau, the great French orator at the commencement of the Revolution, said, "War is the national industry of Prussia." Later, Napoleon remarked that Prussia "was hatched from a cannon ball," and shortly before the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 the French military attaché, in reporting to his government, wrote that "other countries possessed an army, but in Prussia the army possessed the country." ”

“ CHAPTER III. THE ARMY AND NAVY—THE WAR PARTY.
I. PRUSSIA is before all else a military State, and since 1871 Prussian militarism has laid its heavy hand upon Southern Germany, the inhabitants of which were formerly noted for their peaceful ways. The warlike spirit of the Prussians is the fruit of the statesmanship pursued by their rulers, those Electors of Brandenburg who afterwards became Kings of Prussia. ”

“ We will, with the justest admiration, consider the sublime example, when a strong will of iron consequence and high intelligence succeeds in delaying, in mastering, and allaying every crisis of serious importance; and above all, when this tends to the welfare of Germany, and the maintenance of the peace of Europe. But Prussia, gentlemen, Prussia can not bear such a state of things. ”

“ German professors, inflated with envy and a ridiculous pride in that German culture which has culminated in poison-gas, piracy, and the murder of civilians, have denounced us as land-grabbers and bloodthirsty; and no answer to that charge seems necessary beyond a comparison of the widely different ways in which the British and German empires have been built. Fifty years ago Prussia resolved to transform itself into a great empire. To this end, it picked a quarrel with its neighbour Austria and defeated her. ”

“ It is because Prussia has progressed like a giant, while the rest of Germany has been lagging behind, or actually losing ground, that every individual in her now large area seems personally to have aided in the work, and acts and speaks as if the whole ultimate result depended upon his own exertions. ”

“ The phenomenal rise of Prussia and its predominance in German affairs gave to its leading city immense influence and remarkable prosperity, Prussia making herself the leader of the movement that finally welded together the twenty-six states now constituting the German Empire, with the Prussian King as Kaiser. It is essentially modern, and, despite the disadvantages of its location, is without doubt one of the handsomest cities of Europe. Notable among its many fine buildings are the Royal Palace and that of the Emperor and Crown Prince, and the Royal Library, containing a million volumes. ”

“ She deserves well of her country!
¶ But mark this well: out of Prussia’s humiliations came her ultimate strength; the vanquished, as is often the story of human life, was strengthened more than the victors. Prussia, chastened by her severe lessons, henceforth proceeded to build herself up slowly till at last she was ready, many, many years later, to strike for German Unity that final blow at the palace of the French kings at Versailles. ”

“ For a century after the reign of Frederick, Prussia remained the most prominent Germanic state in Europe. ”

“ We anticipate no good from the revolution in Prussia. We are well aware, indeed, of the intelligence and energy of that gallant people. We know that her inhabitants are the most highly educated of any people in Europe, and second to none in patriotism and spirit. Prussia is capable, in good time, and from her own exertions, of working out the elements of constitutional freedom. But we distrust all revolutions brought about by example. ”