Prussian

“ 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! ”

“ Anything unexpected—the forlorn hopes, the eleventh-hour inspirations, by which the weak can elude the strong, and which take the hearts of happier men like trumpets—filled the Prussian with a cold fury, as of a frustrated fate. The Prussian felt as a Chicago pork butcher would feel if the pigs not only refused to pass through his machine, but turned into romantic wild boars, raging and rending, calling for the old hunting of princes and fit to be the crests of kings. ”

“ The King of Prussia wins the first skirmish and strangles with iron hand the murmurs of the people of Germany for freedom. Karl Schurz, Franz Siegel, Jacobi and their fellow students crawl through the sewers, elude the Prussian soldiers, and reach our shores to swell the rank of militant Democracy. All Europe rings with the headsman’s ax and from a thousand hilltops the ropes of hangmen swing in the stark heavens. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 will conquer with her whole people, but she will succumb if she relies only on her army."
"It is true," said Alexander, thoughtfully, "the Prussian nation has manifested of late a wonderful enthusiasm, and has risen as one man. ”

“ On the basis of the German Federal Constitution attempts have come to light, the unmistakable object of which is to set down such a power of the Prussian State in Germany and in Europe, which forms a well-earned heritage of the glorious history of our fathers, and which the Prussian people has not at any time resolved to allow to be alienated from it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the presence of an Austrian one feels his charm instead of the aggressive personality which is Prussian. Undoubtedly the Prussians counted on the good nature of the southern Germans, Hungarians, Poles and Slavs in their insidious campaign to make these peoples, practically, if not in name, subject and tributary to Prussian rule. ”

“ Wholly apart from the sheer physical fact that 134,616 square miles of Germany's 208,780, and 40,163,333 people of the Empire's 64,903,423, are Prussian, the very conditions under which the Imperial organization of the present day came into being predetermined that Prussia and things Prussian should enjoy unfailing pre-eminence in all that pertains to German government and politics. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As we saw in Chapter XVI, the Prussian statesman, Hertzberg, had long been maturing an ingenious scheme for the aggrandisement of Prussia, by a general shuffling together of boundaries in the East of Europe.828 On 13th May 1789 he presented it in its complete form to Frederick William, who, after long balancings on this question, now accorded his consent. The Prussian monarch thereby pledged himself, at a favourable occasion, to offer his armed mediation to Russia, Austria, and Turkey. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But in this war there is no such common term. No one outside the districts led by Prussia desires a Prussian life, and perhaps most, certainly many, of those whom Prussia now leads are in different degrees unwilling to continue a Prussian life. ”

“ A kingly race, to maintain or increase its strength, must appeal to the national imagination. The Hohenzollerns have been able to do this. The Prussian imagination is largely made up of appetite, and their Kings, however fatuous and limited of vision they may have been in other matters, have never lost sight of this fact. If we include the Great Elector, there have been ten of these Kings, and of the ten eight have made Prussia bigger than they found 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." ”

“ Spying is just as essential an ingredient of Prussian character as conceit, indifference to the feelings of others, jealousy, envy, self-satisfaction, conceit, industry, inquisitiveness, veneration for officialdom, imitativeness, materialism, and the other national attributes that will occur to those who know Prussia, as distinct from the other German States. ”

“ They have been so steeped in the prussian tradition that their loyalties have demanded the sabotage of the noblest educational principle, teaching the truth. The Prussian is distinguished by his loyalty to superiors and his obedience to duty, irrespective of sacrifice. ”

“ But national pride and national vanity were enlisted, and it became a widespread doctrine accepted by the military and even by many civilians. The Prussians are far more penetrated by the military spirit than the Americans or English or French, and such a doctrine ministered to the greatness of the power of Prussia. It was part of Prussian military theory and sometimes of practice a century ago. ”

“ From the Prussians the softer and more emotional German peoples of the South received the gift of national unity, and they repaid the debt by extravagant admiration for Prussian prowess and hardihood, which had been so serviceable to their cause. ”

“ I entertain the firmest hope that France and Prussia, in the future, will represent the dualism of intelligence and progress.’ Nevertheless, it seemed to us that at these words we surprised a singular smile on the lips of a man who is destined to play a distinguished part in Prussian politics, the Privy Councillor Baron von ——. ”

“ The Prussian army is composed of men engaged in business at home and anxious to return; the North does not love the South, and divisions may arise. The King of Prussia is an old man, and he may die. Without absolutely counting upon a French army raising the siege, there are levées forming in Lyons and elsewhere, and the Germans will find their communications seriously menaced. ”

“ But the German or rather the Prussian, has been moulded into the extraordinary person that he is to-day by a slow process of education extending through several generations. At Marienburg, on the Baltic shore of Germany, stands the ancient castle of the Teutonic Knights recently restored by the German Kaiser. The Knights at one time conquered and occupied much of the territory that is now modern Prussia. A military religious order, they attracted adventurers from all lands and their descendants constitute many of the noble families of Prussia. ”

“ As applied to the lesser States, and especially those of central Germany, where division and weakness has caused them to live only upon sufferance for generations past, there may be some truth in the view. But if used of Prussia it ignores all the facts of history for the past two centuries, and the sentiment which grew up from these facts the feeling which every Prussian has at heart that it is to the sword his country owes its long and steady growth in the path of greatness. ”

“ Prussian men and women hardly know the meaning of the word "private," and, as they have Prussianised to a great or less degree all the other States of the Empire, they have inured the German to publicity from childhood upwards. ”

“ By war they united the peoples of Germany; by war they hoped to gain for the peoples of Germany an acknowledged supremacy in the civilized world. These peoples had received unity at the hands of Prussia, and though they did not like Prussia, they believed enthusiastically in Prussian strength and Prussian wisdom. ”

“ The Sea the Path of Victory THE Kaiser and the Prussian people doubtless encourage themselves by remembering the tremendous struggle which Frederick, so-called the Great, waged against an almost overwhelming coalition of the neighboring peoples, but they carefully and intentionally forget that Prussia had as its ally throughout that desperate struggle of the Seven Years’ War the power of England, which it hates. ”

“ A reform in France on the Prussian model would have required several years and the overthrow of all our modern institutions. Can we imagine, with the other expenditures of our budget, eight hundred millions more for the army? Prussia has been half a century in achieving its present organization. Germany has its gradation of ranks and classes. A numerous nobility forms the basis of its military institutions, and furnishes, in time of war as well as peace, the natural leaders of the whole nation. And we Frenchmen—we are still under the elective system, which is that of children at their sports. ”

“ The least monarchical of us must, I think, admit that here we have a good illustration of the distinction between a man sure of his reputation and a cur nervously alarmed for his.
This severe law of lèse-majesté in Bismarck's Prusso-German Empire is only an illustration of the way in which the German people have been made to grovel before the Prussian jack-boot. The Prussification of Germany in matters military and in matters bureaucratic has gone on apace since 1870. Prussia, it is not too much to say, has hitherto consisted in a nation of slaves and tyrants and nothing else. ”