he
Prussian wars of conquest had brought together many heterogeneous
populations professing different religions, toleration became a vital
necessity for the State. It is not a virtue of the dynasty, and the
Hohenzollerns certainly deserve no credit for it. The Prussian
doctrine of toleration has always been of a negative and conditional
kind. Prussian Kings have adopted the religious theory of Gibbon. All
religions are equally true to the believer. They are equally true to
the unbeliever. _They are equally useful to the State._

All religions have proved equally useful and have been exploited with
equal indifference by the Prussian dynasty. The attitude of Frederick
the Great to religion is characteristic of the Hohenzollern attitude.
Frederick the Great was surrounded by a band of French, Swiss, and
Scottish Atheists. His main relaxation from the cares of State was to
bandy cynical and obscene jests on Christianity with the Table Round
at the private supper-parties of Potsdam. But his royal hatred and
contempt for all positive religion did not prevent him from cordially
inviting the Jesuits to his dominions because he found them useful
pedagogues to teach and conciliate his newly conquered Polish
subjects. It is one of the paradoxes of history that the same
religious order which had been suppressed by the Pope and expelled by
the Catholic Kings of France and Spain was protected by the Atheist
King of Prussia and the Atheist Empress of Russia. According to the
same opportunist Hohenzollern tradition, Bismarck in turn fought the
Pope, imprisoned Bishops and Cardinals, and then used the influence of
the Pope and the hierarchy to further his Machiavellian policy. Even
so in more recent times the Kaiser appeared at one and the same time
as a devout pilgrim to the Holy Land, as the special friend of Abdul
Hamid--Abdul the Damned--and as the self-appointed protector of three
hundred million Mohammedans.

XII.--HOW THE GERMAN PEOPLE WERE SUBJECTED TO PRUSSIA.

We have analyzed the principles which ever directed the Prussian
State. We have described the characteristics of the Hohenzollern
dynasty who created that Prussian State. How is it that the German
nation should have surrendered their destinies to a power which is so
constitutionally selfish, so inherently evil, which has trampled down
all the principles that a modern world holds dear and sacred?

The subjection of Germany to Prussia has been a triumph of
Hohenzoll