A BRIEF SURVEY OF GERMANY'S HISTORICAL
DEVELOPMENT
The life of the individual citizen is valuable only when it is
consciously and actively employed for the attainment of great ends. The
same holds good of nations and States. They are, as it were,
personalities in the framework of collective humanity, infinitely
various in their endowments and their characteristic qualities, capable
of the most different achievements, and serving the most multifarious
purposes in the great evolution of human existence.
Such a theory will not be accepted from the standpoint of the
materialistic philosophy which prevails among wide circles of our nation
to-day.
According to it, all that happens in the world is a necessary
consequence of given conditions; free will is only necessity become
conscious. It denies the difference between the empiric and the
intelligible Ego, which is the basis of the notion of moral freedom.
This philosophy cannot stand before scientific criticism. It seems
everywhere arbitrarily restricted by the narrow limits of the
insufficient human intelligence. The existence of the universe is
opposed to the law of a sufficient cause; infinity and eternity are
incomprehensible to our conceptions, which are confined to space and
time.
The essential nature of force and volition remains inexplicable. We
recognize only a subjectively qualified phenomenon in the world; the
impelling forces and the real nature of things are withdrawn from our
understanding. A systematic explanation of the universe is quite
impossible from the human standpoint. So much seems clear--although no
demonstrable certainty attaches to this theory--that spiritual laws
beyond the comprehension of us men govern the world according to a
conscious plan of development in the revolving cycles of a perpetual
change. Even the gradual evolution of mankind seems ruled by a hidden
moral law. At any rate we recognize in the growing spread of
civilization and common moral ideas a gradual progress towards purer and
higher forms of life.
It is indeed impossible for us to prove design and purpose in every
individual case, because our attitude to the universal whole is too
limited and anomalous. But within the limitations of our knowledge of
things and of the inner necessity of events we can at least try to
understand in broad outlines the ways of Providence, which we may also
term the principles of development. We shall thus obtain useful guidance
for our further investigation and procedure.
The agency and will of Providence are most clearly seen in the history
of the growth of species and races, of peoples and States. "What is
true," Goethe once said in a letter to Zelter, "can but be raised and
supported by its history; what is false only lowered and dissipated by
its history."
The formation of peoples and races, the rise and fall of States, the
laws which govern the common life, teach us to recognize which forces
have a creative, sustaining, and beneficent influence, and which work
towards disintegration, and thus produce inevitable downfall. We are
here following the working of universal laws, but we must not forget
that States are personalities endowed with very different human
attributes, with a peculiar and often very marked character, and that
these subjective qualities are distinct factors in the development of
States as a whole. Impulses and influences exercise a very different
effect on the separate national individualities. We must endeavour to
grasp history in the spirit of the psychologist rather than of the
naturalist. Each nation must be judged from its own standpoint if we
wish to learn the general trend of its development. We must study the
history of the German people in its connection with that of the other
European States, and ask first what paths its development has hitherto
followed, and what guidance the past gives for Our future policy. From
the time of their first appearance in history the Germans showed
themselves a first-class civilized people.
When the Roman Empire broke up before the onslaught of the barbarians
there were two main elements which shaped the future of the West,
Christianity and the Germans. The Christian teaching preached equal
rights for all men and community of goods in an empire of masters and
slaves, but formulated the highest moral code, and directed the
attention of a race, which only aimed at luxury, to the world beyond the
grave as the true goal of existence. It made the value of man as man,
and the moral development of personality according to the laws of the
individual conscience, the starting-point of all development. It thus
gradually transformed the philosophy of the ancient world, whose
morality rested solely on the relations with the state. Simultaneously
with this, hordes of Germans from the thickly-populated North poured
victoriously in broad streams over the Roman Empire and the decaying
nations of the Ancient World. These masses could not keep their
nationality pure and maintain their position as political powers. The
States which they founded were short-lived. Even then men recognized how
difficult it is for a lower civilization to hold its own against a
higher. The Germans were gradually merged in the subject nations. The
German element, however, instilled new life into these nations, and
offered new opportunities for growth. The stronger the admixture of
German blood, the more vigorous and the more capable of civilization did
the growing nations appear.
In the meantime powerful opponents sprung up in this newly-formed world.
The Latin race grew up by degrees out of the admixture of the Germans
with the Roman world and the nations subdued by them, and separated
itself from the Germans, who kept themselves pure on the north of the
Alps and in the districts of Scandinavia. At the same time the idea of
the Universal Empire, which the Ancient World had embraced, continued to
flourish.
In the East the Byzantine Empire lasted until A.D. 1453. In the West,
however, the last Roman Emperor had been deposed by Odoacer in 476.
Italy had fallen into the hands of the East Goths and Lombards
successively. The Visigoths had established their dominion in Spain, and
the Franks and Burgundians in Gaul.
A new empire rose from the latter quarter. Charles the Great, with his
powerful hand, extended the Frankish Empire far beyond the boundaries of
Gaul. By the subjugation of the Saxons he became lord of the country
between the Rhine and the Elbe; he obtained the sovereignty in Italy by
the conquest of the Lombards, and finally sought to restore the Western
Roman Empire. He was crowned Emperor in Rome in the year 800. His
successors clung to this claim; but the Frankish Empire soon fell to
pieces. In its partition the western half formed what afterwards became
France, and the East Frankish part of the Empire became the later
Germany. While the Germans in the West Frankish Empire, in Italy and
Spain, had abandoned their speech and customs, and had gradually
amalgamated with the Romans, the inhabitants of the East Frankish
Empire, especially the Saxons and their neighbouring tribes, maintained
their Germanic characteristics, language, and customs. A powerful
German [A] kingdom arose which renewed the claims of Charles the Great to
the Western Roman Empire. Otto the Great was the first _German_ King who
took this momentous step. It involved him and his successors in a
quarrel with the Bishops of Rome, who wished to be not only Heads of the
Church, but lords of Italy, and did not hesitate to falsify archives in
order to prove their pretended title to that country.
[Footnote A: German (Deutsch=diutisk) signifies originally "popular,"
opposed to "foreign"--_e.g._, the Latin Church dialect. It was first
used as the name of a people, in the tenth century A.D.]
The Popes made good this right, but they did not stop there. Living in
Rome, the sacred seat of the world-empire, and standing at the head of a
Church which claimed universality, they, too, laid hold in their own way
of the idea of universal imperium. The notion was one of the boldest
creations of the human intellect--to found and maintain a
world-sovereignty almost wholly by the employment of spiritual powers.
Naturally these Papal pretensions led to feuds with the Empire. The
freedom of secular aspirations clashed with the claims of spiritual
dominion. In the portentous struggle of the two Powers for the
supremacy, a struggle which inflicted heavy losses on the German Empire,
the Imperial cause was worsted. It was unable to mould the widely
different and too independent subdivisions of the empire into a
homogeneous whole, and to crush the selfish particularism of the
estates. The last Staufer died on the scaffold at Naples under the axe
of Charles of Anjou, who was a vassal of the Church.
The great days of the German-Roman Empire were over. The German power
lay on the ground in fragments. A period of almost complete anarchy
followed. Dogmatism and lack of patriotic sentiment, those bad
characteristics of the German people, contributed to extend this
destruction to the economic sphere. The intellectual life of the German
people deteriorated equally. At the time when the Imperial power was
budding and under the rule of the highly-gifted Staufers, German poetry
was passing through a first classical period. Every German country was
ringing with song; the depth of German sentiment found universal
expression in ballads and poems, grave or gay, and German idealism
inspired the minnesingers. But with the disappearance of the Empire
every string was silent, and even the plastic arts could not rise above
the coarseness and confusion of the political conditions. The material
prosperity of the people indeed improved, as affairs at home were better
regulated, and developed to an amazing extent; the Hanseatic League bore
its flag far and wide over the northern seas, and the great
trade-routes, which linked the West and Orient, led from Venice and
Genoa through Germany. But the earlier political power was never again
attained.
Nevertheless dislike of spiritual despotism still smouldered in the
breasts of that German people, which had submitted to the Papacy, and
was destined, once more to blaze up into bright flames, and this time in
the spiritual domain. As she grew more and more worldly, the Church had
lost much of her influence on men's minds. On the other hand, a refining
movement had grown up in humanism, which, supported by the spirit of
antiquity, could not fail from its very nature to become antagonistic to
the Church. It found enthusiastic response in Germany, and was joined by
everyone whose thoughts and hopes were centred in freedom. Ulrich von
Hutten's battle-cry, "I have dared the deed," rang loud through the
districts of Germany.
Humanism was thus in a sense the precursor of the Reformation, which
conceived in the innermost heart of the German people, shook Europe to
her foundations. Once more it was the German people which, as formerly
in the struggle between the Arian Goths and the Orthodox Church, shed
it's heart's blood in a religious war for spiritual liberty, and now for
national independence also. No struggle more pregnant with consequences
for the development of humanity had been fought out since the Persian
wars. In this cause the German people nearly disappeared, and lost all
political importance. Large sections of the Empire were abandoned to
foreign States. Germany became a desert. But this time the Church did
not remain victorious as she did against the Arian Goths and the
Staufers. It is true she was not laid prostrate; she still remained a
mighty force, and drew new strength from the struggle itself.
Politically the Catholic States, under Spanish leadership, won an
undisputed supremacy. But, on the other hand, the right to spiritual
freedom was established. This most important element of civilization was
retained for humanity in the reformed Churches, and has become ever
since the palladium of all progress, though even after the Peace of
Westphalia protracted struggles were required to assert religious
freedom.
The States of the Latin race on their side now put forward strong claims
to the universal imperium in order to suppress the German ideas of
freedom. Spain first, then France: the two soon quarrelled among
themselves about the predominance. At the same time, in Germanized
England a firs-class Protestant power was being developed, and the age
of discoveries, which coincided roughly with the end of the Reformation
and the Thirty Years' War, opened new and unsuspected paths to human
intellect and human energy. Political life also acquired a fresh
stimulus. Gradually a broad stream of immigrants poured into the
newly-discovered districts of America, the northern part of which fell
to the lot of the Germanic and the southern part to that of the Latin
race. Thus was laid the foundation of the great colonial empires, and
consequently, of world politics. Germany remained excluded from this
great movement, since she wasted her forces in ecclesiastical disputes
and religious wars. On the other hand, in combination with England, the
Low Countries and Austria, which latter had at the same time to repel
the inroad of Turks from the East, she successfully curbed the French
ambition for sovereignty in a long succession of wars. England by these
wars grew to be the first colonial and maritime power in the world.
Germany forfeited large tracts of territory, and lost still more in
political power. She broke up into numerous feeble separate States,
which were entirely void of any common sympathy with the German cause.
But this very disintegration lent her fresh strength. A centre of
Protestant power was established in the North--i.e., Prussia.
After centuries of struggle the Germans had succeeded in driving back the
Slavs, who poured in from the East, in wrestling large tracts from them,
and in completely Germanizing them. This struggle, like that with the
niggard soil, produced a sturdy race, conscious of its strength, which
extended its power to the coasts of the Baltic, and successfully planted
Germanic culture in the far North. The German nation was finally
victorious also against Swedes, who disputed the command of the Baltic.
In that war the Great Elector had laid the foundations of a strong
political power, which, under his successors, gradually grew into an
influential force in Germany. The headship of Protestant Germany
devolved more and more on this state, and a counterpoise to Catholic
Austria grew up. This latter State had developed out of Germany into an
independent great Power, resting its supremacy not only on a German
population, but also on Hungarians and Slavs. In the Seven Years' War
Prussia broke away from Catholic Austria and the Empire, and confronted
France and Russia as an independent Protestant State.
But yet another dark hour was in store for Germany, as she once more
slowly struggled upwards. In France the Monarchy has exhausted the
resources of the nation for its own selfish ends. The motto of the
monarchy, _L'état c'est moi,_ carried to an extreme, provoked a
tremendous revulsion of ideas, which culminated in the stupendous
revolution of 1789, and everywhere in Europe, and more specially in
Germany, shattered and swept away the obsolete remnants of medievalism.
The German Empire as such disappeared; only fragmentary States survived,
among which Prussia alone showed any real power. France once again under
Napoleon was fired with the conception of the universal imperium, and
bore her victorious eagles to Italy, Egypt, Syria, Germany, and Spain,
and even to the inhospitable plains of Russia, which by a gradual
political absorption of the Slavonic East, and a slow expansion of power
in wars with Poland, Sweden, Turkey, and Prussia, had risen to an
important place among the European nations. Austria, which had become
more and more a congeries of different nationalities, fell before the
mighty Corsican. Prussia, which seemed to have lost all vigour in her
dream of peace, collapsed before his onslaught.
But the German spirit emerged with fresh strength from the deepest
humiliation. The purest and mightiest storm of fury against the yoke of
the oppressor that ever honoured an enslaved nation burst out in the
Protestant North. The wars of liberation, with their glowing enthusiasm,
won back the possibilities of political existence for Prussia and for
Germany, and paved the way for further world-wide historical
developments.
While the French people in savage revolt against spiritual and secular
despotism had broken their chains and proclaimed their _rights,_ another
quite different revolution was working in Prussia--the revolution of
_duty_. The assertion of the rights of the individual leads ultimately
to individual irresponsibility and to a repudiation of the State.
Immanuel Kant, the founder of critical philosophy, taught, in opposition
to this view, the gospel of moral duty, and Scharnhorst grasped the idea
of universal military service. By calling upon each individual to
sacrifice property and life for the good of the community, he gave the
clearest expression to the idea of the State, and created a sound basis
on which the claim to individual rights might rest at the same time
Stein laid the foundations of self-employed-government in Prussia.
While measures of the most far-reaching historical importance were thus
being adopted in the State on which the future fate of Germany was to
depend, and while revolution was being superseded by healthy progress, a
German Empire of the first rank, the Empire of intellect, grew up in the
domain of art and science, where German character and endeavour found
the deepest and fullest expression. A great change had been effected in
this land of political narrowness and social sterility since the year
1750. A literature and a science, born in the hearts of the nation, and
deeply rooted in the moral teaching of Protestantism, had raised their
minds far beyond the boundaries of practical life into the sunlit
heights of intellectual liberty, and manifested the power and
superiority of the German spirit. "Thus the new poetry and science
became for many decades the most effectual bond of union for this
dismembered people, and decided the victory of Protestantism in German
life." [B]
[Footnote B: Treitschke, "Deutsche Geschichte", i., p. 88.]
Germany was raised to be once more "the home of heresy, since she
developed the root-idea of the Reformation into the right of
unrestricted and unprejudiced inquiry". [C] Moral obligations, such as no
nation had ever yet made the standard of conduct, were laid down in the
philosophy of Kant and Fichte, and a lofty idealism inspired the songs
of her poets. The intense effect of these spiritual agencies was
realized in the outburst of heroic fury in 1813. "Thus our classical
literature, starting from a different point, reached the same goal as
the political work of the Prussian monarchy", [D] and of those men of
action who pushed this work forward in the hour of direst ruin.
[Footnote C: _Ibid.,_ i., p. 90.]
[Footnote D: _Ibid._]
The meeting of Napoleon and Goethe, two mighty conquerors, was an event
in the world's history. On one side the scourge of God, the great
annihilator of all survivals from the past, the gloomy despot, the last
abortion of the revolution--a
"Part of the power that still
Produces Good, while still devising Ill";
on the other, the serenely grave Olympian who uttered the words, "Let
man be noble, resourceful, and good"; who gave a new content to the
religious sentiment, since he conceived all existence as a perpetual
change to higher conditions, and pointed out new paths in science; who
gave the clearest expression to all aspirations of the human intellect,
and all movements of the German mind, and thus roused his people to
consciousness; who finally by his writings on every subject showed that
the whole realm of human knowledge was concentrated in the German brain;
a prophet of truth, an architect of imperishable monuments which testify
to the divinity in man.
The great conqueror of the century was met by the hero of intellect, to
whom was to fall the victory of the future. The mightiest potentate of
the Latin race faced the great Germanic who stood in the forefront of
humanity.
Truly a nation which in the hour of its deepest political degradation
could give birth to men like Fichte, Scharnhorst, Stein, Schiller, and
Goethe, to say nothing about the great soldier-figures of the wars of
Liberation, must be called to a mighty destiny.
We must admit that in the period immediately succeeding the great
struggle of those glorious days, the short-sightedness, selfishness, and
weakness of its Sovereigns, and the jealousy of its neighbours, robbed
the German people of the full fruits of its heroism, devotion, and pure
enthusiasm. The deep disappointment of that generation found expression
in the revolutionary movement of 1848, and in the emigration of
thousands to the free country of North America, where the Germans took a
prominent part in the formation of a new nationality, but were lost to
their mother-country. The Prussian monarchy grovelled before Austria and
Russia, and seemed to have forgotten its national duties.
Nevertheless in the centre of the Prussian State there was springing up
from the blood of the champions of freedom a new generation that no
longer wished to be the anvil, but to wield the hammer. Two men came to
the front, King William I. and the hero of the Saxon forest. Resolutely
they united the forces of the nation, which at first opposed them from
ignorance, and broke down the selfishness and dogmatic positivism of the
popular representatives. A victorious campaign settled matters with
Austria, who did not willingly cede the supremacy in Germany, and left
the German Imperial confederation without forfeiting her place as a
Great Power. France was brought to the ground with a mighty blow; the
vast majority of the German peoples united under the Imperial crown
which the King of Prussia wore; the old idea of the German Empire was
revived in a federal shape by the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria,
and Italy. The German idea, as Bismarck fancied it, ruled from the North
Sea to the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. Like a phoenix from the
ashes, the German giant rose from the sluggard-bed of the old German
Confederation, and stretched his mighty limbs.
It was an obvious and inevitable result that this awakening of Germany
vitally affected the other nations which had hitherto divided the
economic and political power. Hostile combinations threatened us on all
sides in order to check the further expansion of our power. Hemmed in
between France and Russia, who allied themselves against us, we failed
to gather the full fruits of our victories. The short-sightedness and
party feuds of the newly-formed Reichstag--the old hereditary failings
of our nation--prevented any colonial policy on broad lines. The intense
love of peace, which the nation and Government felt, made us fall behind
in the race with other countries.
In the most recent partition of the earth, that of Africa, victorious
Germany came off badly. France, her defeated opponent, was able to found
the second largest colonial Empire in the world; England appropriated
the most important portions; even small and neutral Belgium claimed a
comparatively large and valuable share; Germany was forced to be content
with some modest strips of territory. In addition to, and in connection
with, the political changes, new views and new forces have come forward.
Under the influence of the constitutional ideas of Frederick the Great,
and the crop of new ideas borne by the French Revolution, the conception
of the State has completely changed since the turn of the century. The
patrimonial state of the Middle Ages was the hereditary possession of
the Sovereign. Hence sprung the modern State, which represents the
reverse of this relation, in which the Sovereign is the first servant of
the State, and the interest of the State, and not of the ruler, is the
key to the policy of the Government. With this altered conception of the
State the principle of nationality has gradually developed, of which the
tendency is as follows: Historical boundaries are to be disregarded, and
the nations combined into a political whole; the State will thus acquire
a uniform national character and common national interests.
This new order of things entirely altered the basis of international
relations, and set new and unknown duties before the statesman. Commerce
and trade also developed on wholly new lines.
After 1815 the barriers to every activity--guilds and trade
restrictions--were gradually removed. Landed property ceased to be a
monopoly. Commerce and industries flourished conspicuously. "England
introduced the universal employment of coal and iron and of machinery
into industries, thus founding immense industrial establishments; by
steamers and railways she brought machinery into commerce, at the same
time effecting an industrial revolution by physical science and
chemistry, and won the control of the markets of the world by cotton.
There came, besides, the enormous extension of the command of credit in
the widest sense, the exploitation of India, the extension of
colonization over Polynesia, etc." England at the same time girdled the
earth with her cables and fleets. She thus attained to a sort of
world-sovereignty. She has tried to found a new universal Empire; not,
indeed, by spiritual or secular weapons, like Pope and Emperor in bygone
days, but by the power of money, by making all material interests
dependent on herself.
Facing her, between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, linking the West
and the East, the United States of North America have risen to be an
industrial and commercial power of the first rank. Supported by
exceptionally abundant natural resources, and the unscrupulously pushing
character of her inhabitants, this mighty Empire aims at a suitable
recognition of her power in the council of the nations, and is on the
point of securing this by the building of a powerful navy.
Russia has not only strengthened her position in Europe, but has
extended her power over the entire North of Asia, and is pressing
farther into the centre of that continent. She has already crossed
swords with the States of the Mongolian race. This vast population,
which fills the east of the Asiatic continent, has, after thousands of
years of dormant civilization, at last awakened to political life, and
categorically claims its share in international life. The entrance of
Japan into the circle of the great World Powers means a call to arms.
"Asia for the Asiatics," is the phrase which she whispers beneath her
breath, trusting in the strength of her demand. The new Great Power has
emerged victoriously from its first encounter with a European foe.
China, too, is preparing to expand her forces outwardly. A mighty
movement is thrilling Asia--the awakening of a new epoch.
Dangers, then, which have already assumed a profound importance for the
civilized countries of Europe, are threatening from Asia, the old cradle
of the nations. But even in the heart of the European nations, forces
which have slumbered hitherto are now awake. The persisting ideas of the
French Revolution and the great industrial progress which characterized
the last century, have roused the working classes of every country to a
consciousness of their importance and their social power. The workers,
originally concerned only in the amelioration of their material
position, have, in theory, abandoned the basis of the modern State, and
seek their salvation in the revolution which they preach. They do not
wish to obtain what they can within the limitations of the historically
recognized State, but they wish to substitute for it a new State, in
which they themselves are the rulers. By this aspiration they not only
perpetually menace State and society, but endanger in the separate
countries the industries from which they live, since they threaten to
destroy the possibility of competing in the international markets by
continuous increase of wages and decrease of work. Even in Germany this
movement has affected large sections of the population.
Until approximately the middle of the last century, agriculture and
cattle-breeding formed the chief and most important part of German
industries. Since then, under the protection of wise tariffs, and in
connection with the rapid growth of the German merchant navy, trade has
marvellously increased. Germany has become an industrial and trading
nation; almost the whole of the growing increase of the population finds
work and employment in this sphere. Agriculture has more and more lost its
leading position in the economic life of the people. The artisan
class has thus become a power in our State. It is organized in trade
unions, and has politically fallen under the influence of the
international social democracy. It is hostile to the national class
distinctions, and strains every nerve to undermine the existing power of
the State.
It is evident that the State cannot tolerate quietly this dangerous
agitation, and that it must hinder, by every means, the efforts of the
anti-constitutionalist party to effect their purpose. The law of
self-preservation demands this; but it is clear that, to a certain
point, the pretensions of the working classes are justified. The citizen
may fairly claim to protect himself from poverty by work, and to have an
opportunity of raising himself in the social scale, if he willingly
devotes his powers. He is entitled to demand that the State should grant
this claim, and should be bound to protect him against the tyranny of
capital.
Two means of attaining such an object are open to the State: first, it
may create opportunities of work, which secure remunerative employment
to all willing hands; secondly, it may insure the workman by legislation
against every diminution in his capacity to work owing to sickness, age,
or accident; may give him material assistance when temporarily out of
work, and protect him against compulsion which may hinder him from
working.
The economical prosperity of Germany as the visible result of three
victorious campaigns created a labour market sufficiently large for
present purposes, although without the conscious intention of the State.
German labour, under the protection of the political power, gained a
market for itself. On the other hand, the German State has intervened
with legislation, with full consciousness of the end and the means. As
Scharnhorst once contrasted the duty of the citizen with the rights of
man, so the Emperor William I. recognized the duty of the State towards
those who were badly equipped with the necessaries of life. The position
of the worker was assured, so far as circumstances allowed, by social
legislation. No excuse, therefore, for revolutionary agitation now
existed.
A vigorous opposition to all the encroachments of the social democrats
indicated the only right way in which the justifiable efforts of the
working class could be reconciled with the continuance of the existing
State and of existing society, the two pillars of all civilization and
progress. This task is by no means completed. The question still is, How
to win back the working class to the ideals of State and country? Willing
workers must be still further protected against social democratic tyranny.
Germany, nevertheless, is in social-political respects at the head of
all progress in culture. German science has held its place in the world.
Germany certainly took the lead in political sciences during the last
century, and in all other domains of intellectual inquiry has won a
prominent position through the universality of her philosophy and her
thorough and unprejudiced research into the nature of things.
The achievements of Germany in the sphere of science and literature are
attested by the fact that the annual export of German books to foreign
countries is, according to trustworthy estimates, twice as large as that
of France, England, and America combined. It is only in the domain of
the exact sciences that Germany has often been compelled to give
precedence to foreign countries. German art also has failed to win a
leading position. It shows, indeed, sound promise in many directions,
and has produced much that is really great; but the chaos of our
political conditions is, unfortunately, reflected in it. The German
Empire has politically been split up into numerous parties. Not only are
the social democrats and the middle class opposed, but they, again, are
divided among themselves; not only are industries and agriculture bitter
enemies, but the national sentiment has not yet been able to vanquish
denominational antagonisms, and the historical hostility between North
and South has prevented the population from growing into a completely
united body.
So stands Germany to-day, torn by internal dissensions, yet full of
sustained strength; threatened on all sides by dangers, compressed into
narrow, unnatural limits, she still is filled with high aspirations, in
her nationality, her intellectual development, in her science,
industries, and trade.
And now, what paths does this history indicate to us for the future?
What duties are enforced on us by the past?
It is a question of far-reaching importance; for on the way in which the
German State answers this question, depend not only our own further
development, but to some extent the subsequent shaping of the history of
the world.