gems and diadems and ornaments, but for
practical purposes, in order to forge the weapons of the Nibelungen,
the alloy of the baser metal was indispensable. It required the
mixture of Prussian sand and Prussian iron to weld us into a nation,
to raise us to an empire. It is because we Germans are artists and
dreamers and individualists that we could never manage our own
affairs, that we have always been "non-political animals."[6] On the
contrary, it is because the Prussian has no brilliance, no romance, no
personality, that he makes a splendid soldier and a model bureaucrat.
Two things above all were required to make Germany into a powerful
State--a strong army and a well-ordered administration. Prussia has
given us both.

[6] This is again and again admitted even by the most
patriotic German writers. (See General von Bernhardi's last
book, "The Coming War": "Wir sind ein unpolitisches
Volk"--"We are a non-political people.")

'And let us not forget that Germany more than any other Power required
such a strong army and such a strong administration, not only owing to
the shortcomings of her national character, but owing to the weakness
and danger of her geographical position. Germany is open on every
frontier. She has ever been harassed by dangerous enemies. Only a
generation ago she was threatened on every side. On the north she had
to face the rulers of the sea, who hampered her commercial expansion;
on the west she had to face the restless Gaul; on the south she was
confronted with the clerical and Jesuitical empire of the Habsburg; on
the east with the empire of the Romanovs. From all those enemies
Prussia has ultimately saved us. The Hohenzollern dynasty has proved a
match for them all.

'The whole annals of Germany and Prussia are a striking proof of the
political weakness of the German and of the strength of the Prussian
character. Again and again Germany has witnessed magnificent outbursts
of national prosperity. She has seen the might of the Hohenstaufen;
she has seen the wealth of the Hansa towns. Again and again she has
witnessed the spontaneous generation and blossoming of civic
prosperity; she has seen the glory and pride of Nuremberg and
Heidelberg, of Cologne and Frankfurt, the art of Duerer and Holbein.
But again and again German culture has been nipped in the bud. It has
been destroyed by civil war and religious war, by internal anarchy and
foreign invasion. The Thirty Years' War dev