sts and to run the hazards of war
because it becomes more and more difficult to govern a divided
Reichstag and a dissatisfied people without uniting them against a
foreign enemy, and because they realize that unless they restore their
prestige and consolidate their power by a signal victory the days of
their predominance are numbered."

XXII.--THE NATURE OF THE COMING WAR.

"The war of to-morrow, therefore, will not be like the war of 1870, a
war confined to two belligerent forces: it will be a universal
European war. Nor will it be a humane war, subject to the rules of
international law and to the decrees of the Hague Tribunal: it will be
an inexorable war; or, to use the expression of von Bernhardi, it will
be 'a war to the knife.' Nor will it be decided in a few weeks, like
the war of 1870: it will involve a long and difficult campaign, or
rather a succession of campaigns; it will mean to either side
political annihilation or supremacy."

CHAPTER III

THE CURSE OF THE HOHENZOLLERN

I.--ROYALTIES MADE IN GERMANY.

It has become a trite and hackneyed claim of the Prussian
megalomaniacs that they are an Imperial people, a super-race
predestined by Nature and Providence to the domination of the world.
It certainly seems a grotesque claim to assert on the part of a people
who in their political and social life have shown themselves a
pre-eminently _servile_ people; who have ever been cringing to their
superiors; who never produced one single leader of free men, one
Cromwell, one Mirabeau, one Gambetta; who always believed in the
virtue of passive obedience; who always submitted to the policeman
rather than to a policy; who always obeyed a Prince rather than a
principle; who, as recently as the end of the eighteenth century,
allowed themselves to be sold like cattle by Hessian princelings; who
never rose to defend their sacred rights; who never fought a spirited
battle in a righteous civil war; and who have always been ready to
fight like slaves at the bidding of a sword-rattling despot.

And yet in one very important respect the Germans may rightly claim
that they are actually ruling the European world. German Princes are
actually seated on almost every throne of Europe. The French language
may still be the language of diplomacy, but the German language, which
was still a despised lingo to Frederick the Great, has become the
language of European royalties. Germany for two hundred years has done
a most