The Prussian turns everything to account, from the scrapings of the
pig-trough to the Austrian Emperor.
The Bavarian lists, the Saxon lists, the Austrian lists--these are all
only indications of injuries to the Prussian's life-saving waistcoat. If
this war is to be a war to the last penny and the last man, the last
Austrian will die before the last Saxon, the last Saxon before the last
Bavarian, the last Bavarian before the last Prussian--and the last
Prussian will not die: he will live to clutch at the last penny.
And the pity of it is that the Austrian is quite a good fellow, the
Saxon is a decent sort of man, the Bavarian is chiefly a brute in drink,
whilst the Prussian--we all know what the Prussian is, the black centre
of hardness, the incarnation of the shady trick, and the very complex
soul of mechanical efficiency.
The Hohenzollern here makes a sandbag of the Hapsburg, of whom Fate has
already made a football.
Fate has always been behind the Hapsburg for his own sins and those of
his house. She has made him kneel at last.