yal. But it also hopes in time to
eradicate socialism from the State. "A vigorous national policy" Prince
von Buelow declares to be "the true remedy against the Social Democratic
Movement"; and though he makes no specific mention of war, it is obvious
that a war like that in which Germany is at present engaged is the most
vigorous form a national policy could possibly take. Was the outbreak of
war last August in part occasioned by the desire on the side of the German
Government to win over the workers of Germany? If so, it had yet another
spectre ready to its hand for the purpose--the spectre of Russia.

[Footnote 1: _Imperial Germany_, p. 184.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_. p. 186.]

In any case, with Germany in this condition, Europe could hardly have
avoided a great war at some time or other; and 1914 follows naturally,
almost inevitably, from 1870. The unification of 1870 was far from
complete. The German national idea still awaits development in the
direction of racial unity, political unity, and constitutional freedom. It
is Prussia that bars the way in all these directions, Prussia, which, in
itself not a nation but a military bureaucracy, a survival of the old
territorial dynastic principle which the world has largely outgrown, has
stamped its character and system upon the German people. "Prussia," says
one of its apologists, "has put an iron girdle round the whole of German
life."[1] But in the end life proves itself stronger than iron bands.
Germany was bound to make another attempt to reach complete nationhood. She
is doing so now. Prussia fights for conquest, for world-power, and makes
docile Germany imagine that she is fighting for these also; but what
Germany is really fighting for, blindly and gropingly, is freedom and
unity. She has indeed "to hack her way through." But it is not, as she
supposes, hostile Europe which hems her in and keeps her from her "place in
the sun"; it is the Prussian girdle and the Prussian chains which hamper
the free movements of her limbs and hold her close prisoner in the shadow
of the Hohenzollern castle. The overthrow of Prussia means the release of
Germany; and France, who gave Germany greatness in 1870, may with the help
of the Allies be able in the near future to give her an even greater gift,
the gift of liberty.

[Footnote 1: _Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century_, p. 106.]

Sec.7. _The Map of Europe, 1814-1914_.--We have now watched the national idea
at work