Often of late I have thought of those twenty-one locomotives moving
along the bank of the Rhine. They were a symbol. They stood for the
House of Hohenzollern; they carried Caesar and all his fortunes, which
had begun long before locomotives were invented. July 19, 1870, is one
of the dates that does not remain of the same size, but grows, has not
done growing yet, will be one of History's enormous dates before it is
done growing. The heavier descendants of those locomotives have been
lugging to France a larger destruction, and more hideous, than their
ancestors dragged there; but this new freight belongs to the same
haul, forms part of one vast organic materialistic growth, and
spiritual eclipse, of which 1870 and 1914 are important parts, but by
no means the whole.
Woven with it is the struggle of nations for the possession of their own
soul. Consider 1870 in this light: Through that war France took her soul
out of the custody of an Emperor and handed it to the people; through
the same war Germany placed her soul in the hands of an Emperor.
Defeated France, rid of her Bonapartes; victorious Germany, shackled to
her Hohenzollern! In the light of forty-five years how those two
opposite actions gleam with significance, and how in the same light the
two words _defeat_ and _victory_ grow lambent with shifting import!
Unless our democratic faith be vain, France walked forward then, and
Germany backward. But this did not seem so last June.