Prussian blue

“ Time has a neutralizing tendency upon its colour, which forms tints of much beauty with white lead, though they are not equal either in purity, brilliancy, or permanence to those of cobalt and ultramarine. When carefully heated, Prussian blue gives off water and assumes a pale green hue; its colour, therefore, depending on the presence of water, must not be exposed to a high temperature. And as it is likewise injured or destroyed by alkalis, which decompose it into oxide of iron and a soluble prussiate, the blue should be avoided in fresco, on account of the lime ”

“ Prussian blue is made by mixing prussiate of potash with a salt of iron. The prussiate of potash is obtained by calcining and digesting old leather, blood, hoofs or other animal matter with carbonate of potash and iron filings. This color is much used, especially for dark blues, making purples and intensifying black. It dries well with oil. Slight differences in the manufacture cause considerable variation in tint and color, which leads to the material being known by different names, such as Antwerp blue, Berlin blue, Harlem blue and Chinese blue. ”

“ It is decomposed by boiling sulphuric acid, and turned green by boiling nitric acid. For all the ordinary uses of a pigment Prussian blue is quite durable, and possesses a depth of colour and a definite tint which is proof against the destructive agencies of light and air; and though its covering powers are not great, it is one of the most important blue pigments in use.
When a salt of the higher oxide of iron is added to a solution of yellow prussiate of potash (or ferrocyanide of potassium) a blue compound is formed which is called Prussian blue. ”

“ The operation of calcining the Prussian blue should be conducted slowly, and is best performed in a closed vessel, though it may also be done in the open. [104] The pieces of blue should not be larger than a hazel nut. They soon split, scale off, and become red, when the heating should cease. On breaking the cooled particles they will show a patchy coloration varying from yellowish-brown to black. On grinding, the mass assumes the desired brown hue. ”

“ For this principle of a quite unproved racial supremacy is the last and worst of the refusals of reciprocity. The Prussian calls all men to admire the beauty of his large blue eyes. If they do, it is because they have inferior eyes; if they don't, it is because they have no eyes. ”

“ Prussia has over 130,000 square miles of territory to fight for, while Bavaria has but 29,292, and the next largest, Wurtemburg, has only an area of 7,531; in every way, political, commercial, or what not, the interests of Prussia are overwhelmingly predominant.
The flag of West Prussia is the black, white, black, shewn in Fig. 211, while the East Prussian flag is made up of but two horizontal strips, the upper black and the lower white. ”

“ The new flag of Germany was to be the German tricolour, black and white and gold.
"The Prussian soldiers," cried Bismarck, "have no tricoloured enthusiasm; among them you will find, as little as in the rest of the Prussian people, the desire for a national regeneration; they are contented with the name of Prussia, and proud of the name of Prussia. These troops follow the black and white flag, not the tricolour; under the black and white they die with joy for their country. ”

“ Is there anything that is Prussian about him? Tell me. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot—his pipe, his bent shoulders, his careless air—he is English, all English. He knows that at this moment I am weighing his fate in the balance and yet he smokes his short wooden pipe. If he has Prussian blood it is a pity, for Germany needs all the Prussian blood that flows red in the veins of men.” He paused and then abruptly, “But the Prussian blood must be sacrificed with the English——”
She fell back from him, deathly white, groping for a chair to support her. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Dear comrades and fellow-burghers and every one present, Prussia's glorious battles have been fought. Our beloved Fatherland has risen from the dust in new and unsuspected splendour. Most of us have bled on the field of glory, and felt the enemy's bullets pierce our breast. Whoever is a true Prussian patriot will now drink with me his country's health and honour! ”

“ The war with Austria," he proceeded, "was unpopular in Prussia itself, and had it been disastrous, serious commotions would have arisen in the interior; nevertheless, I cannot conceal from your majesty, that success has borne its accustomed fruit. The Prussian people feel as if aroused from slumber; the aims of the minister president, now clearly revealed to all eyes, the firmness and daring energy with which he politically followed up their military success, find not only approval, they call forth general enthusiasm. ”

“ Prussia was a force making for reaction, owing to its antiquated suffrage and constitution and to the activities of its upper and middle classes. Prussia still dominates the German Republic much as England would dominate in a British Federation. But it is not the same Prussia. If Prussia is still the citadel of reaction it is also the centre of revolution. The fight between the two is not yet fought out, but if, as seems probable, neither wins, the result will be that the Prussian influence in new Germany will be a somewhat colourless compromise, what we should call Liberalism. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But when we see in every village round about—in every house, in almost every hovel—those hosts of Prussian spiked helmets gleaming in the sun—those Prussian bayonets planted before every door—those Prussian uniforms, studding, with variegated colour, every green rural scene; when we never cease to hear upon the breeze—wherever we may wander in the country—the clang of Prussian military bands, and the tramp of Prussian infantry; when we find the faces of Prussian military at every window, and observe Prussian soldiers mixing in every action of the common everyday life of the country ”

“ At their best, they are simply good, like good children or good nuns. But in Prussia all that is best in the civilised machinery is put at the service of all that is worst in the barbaric mind. Here again the Prussian has no accidental merits, none of those lucky survivals, none of those late repentances, which make the patchwork glory of Russia. Here all is sharpened to a point and pointed to a purpose and that purpose, if words and acts have any meaning at all, is the destruction of liberty throughout the world. ”

“ In the three years Prussia had 180,000 well-drilled men and 120,000 reserves, quite a different proposition from the 12,000 men Napoleon thought he had to face on his retreat from Moscow, and which played a decisive factor in the overthrow of the dictator of Europe.
Through the wars of 1864 and 1866 to 1870, the Franco-Prussian War, the War Machine of Prussia was merged into that of the German Empire and is a record of increasing efforts, entailing unbelievable hard work and a compilation of the minutest details. ”

“ The French army, considerably more numerous than any troops Prussia could bring against it, was already in Franconia, a few marches from the frontier. There was no time to put to good account the strong national feeling which had been excited. Prussia could rely upon its army alone, and though strong in the military reminiscences of the Great Frederick and admirably appointed, the Prussian troops had never seen war; the generals were old men wedded to obsolete traditions, while the King, in his anxiety to please Napoleon, had even gone so far as to discharge Mismanagement of Prussia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This must lead him to respect French opinion, on his son's account; and opinion in France is anything but friendly to Prussia. Almost all Frenchmen, from Reds to Whites,—Republicans, Imperialists, Orleanists, and Legitimists,—seem to be of one mind on this point. They all agree that Prussian supremacy is unendurable. They could have seen their country make way for England, or Russia, or even Austria, without losing their temper altogether; but for France to be displaced by Prussia is something that it is beyond their philosophy to contemplate with patience. ”

“ The spirit and demeanour of Germany, the speeches of the Emperor William, the behaviour of the Prussians throughout the world—whether in the case of a general at Potsdam or a commis voyageur out in East Africa—these Prussian manners inflicting themselves upon the world, the ceaseless boasting of their own power and the clattering of swords, roused throughout the whole world a feeling of antipathy and alarm and effected that moral coalition against Germany which in this war has found such terribly practical expression. ”

“ No one disputes the superiority of Prussia. In order to attain it, it would have been sufficient to be preserved during the half-century just elapsed from the revolutions that have so lowered France and Austria. Prussian statesmen labored energetically to unite Germany. By directing the mental training in the universities, the secret societies, the press, and the diplomacy, they have shown a system and energy that in France would have enabled statesmen of another stamp to bewilder and crush the genius of France, and bring our nation down to the dust. The Napoleonic Empire was one vast treason. ”

“ The root of the evil lies in the fact that in Germany the war spirit and the war caste still prevail, and that a military Power like Prussia is the predominant partner in the German Confederation. The mischievous masterpiece of Carlyle on Frederick the Great, and his more mischievous letter to The Times, have misled English opinion as to the true character and traditions and aims of the Prussian monarchy. Prussia has been pre-eminently for two hundred years the military and reactionary State of Central Europe, much more so even than Russia. ”

“ The principle of universal military service, thus called into existence in Prussia in time of war, had been continued through fifty years of peace, and enabled Prussia, with a population scarcely more than half as numerous as that of Austria, to place upon the decisive field of Königgrätz a larger army than that of her opponent.
The Prussian system, which has since been copied by all the great military nations of Europe, is, in its essential features, as follows: Every able-bodied man in the kingdom, upon reaching the age of twenty years, is available for military service ”

“ It was the old historic story of German duplicity, and the nations of Europe had no excuse for being surprised. When the Prussian Monarchy was first bestowed on the relatively humble family of the Höhenzollerns, they found their territory for the most part sterile, the soil round Berlin and about Potsdam—the favourite residence of the Margraves—a sandy desert that could scarcely be made to yield a crop of rye or oats, so they set themselves to enlarge and enrich it by help of an army out of all proportion to the size and importance of their States. ”

“ Those ribbon favours have proved prickly thorns to the Germans. They seem to act upon the Prussian mind as a red rag upon the bull, and like the rag, when in the deft hands of a skilled toriro, they frequently lure the victim to his own undoing. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to say that so obviously crude and inartistic an appeal had no effect upon an essentially acute and artistic race; and its positive inartisticity bears the hall-mark of your Prussian's incapacity for entering into the more intimate feelings of men of other nations, a point which need hardly be laboured, having in view recent and current bovine misconceptions on the part of German diplomatic agents both in Europe and America. ”