and unique quality which would alone account for this success. Dreams of a
European Empire, of infinite expansion, of world-power, floated before the
national consciousness. The German people were no longer content, to use
Mazzini's words, "to elaborate and express their idea, to contribute their
stone also to the pyramid of history"; they now craved to impose their
idea upon the world at large, and to place their stone on the top of the
pyramid. Modern Germany is an example of nationalism "gone wrong," just as
Napoleon was an example of democratic individualism "gone wrong." The Man
of Destiny has been followed by the Nation of Destiny, the "super-man" by
the "super-nation." Both have had to face a world in arms arrayed against
them.

[Footnote 1: German writers are fond of calling it "Prussia-Germany"
(_Preussen-Deutschland_), a phrase of Treitschke's.]

Thus the national idea in Germany has been cramped, contorted, and
perverted by the Prussian system and the dynastic frontiers. Had the dreams
of 1848 been realised, there might have been no Franco-German War, no
Alsace-Lorraine question, no war of 1914. And what of our third test of
nationhood? Do the people of Germany feel that their government adequately
expresses their general will, that it is truly representative, by which is
not necessarily meant that it is democratic in form?[1] There is no
doubt that in 1848 the educated classes of Germany did actually desire a
democratic form of polity. In that year Germany was as liberal as Italy;
she also had risings in almost every State, not excluding Prussia itself,
which were everywhere answered with promises of a "constitution." But when
reaction came in Germany, as in Italy, Prussia did not, like Piedmont,
stand out for freedom and make itself the model State of Germany; on
the contrary she reverted to her old military absolutism at the first
opportunity. And so the dreams of German liberty, like the dreams of
complete German unity, disappeared before the stern necessity of accepting
the supremacy of a politically reactionary State; and the Prussianisation
which followed did much to neutralise altogether the liberalising
influences of the south. It is therefore possible to maintain that the
political institutions of Germany have come to represent more and more the
genius and will of the population. "The Germany of the twentieth century,"
maintains a recent writer, "is not two but one. The currents have mingled
their