. But that old blackened wooden
sign is at least and after all the sign of something; the sign of the
time when one solitary Hohenzollern did not only set fire to fields and
cities, but did truly set on fire the minds of men, even though it were
fire from hell.

Everything was young once, even Frederick the Great. It was an
appropriate preface to the terrible epic of Prussia that it began with
an unnatural tragedy of the loss of youth. That blind and narrow savage
who was the boy's father had just sufficient difficulty in stamping out
every trace of decency in him, to show that some such traces must have
been there. If the younger and greater Frederick ever had a heart, it
was a broken heart; broken by the same blow that broke his flute. When
his only friend was executed before his eyes, there were two corpses to
be borne away; and one to be borne on a high war-horse through victory
after victory: but with a small bottle of poison in the pocket. It is
not irrelevant thus to pause upon the high and dark house of his
childhood. For the peculiar quality which marks out Prussian arms and
ambitions from all others of the kind consists in this wrinkled and
premature antiquity. There is something comparatively boyish about the
triumphs of all the other tyrants. There was something better than
ambition in the beauty and ardour of the young Napoleon. He was at
least a lover; and his first campaign was like a love-story. All that
was pagan in him worshipped the Republic as men worship a woman, and all
that was Catholic in him understood the paradox of Our Lady of
Victories. Henry VIII., a far less reputable person, was in his early
days a good knight of the later and more florid school of chivalry; we
might almost say that he was a fine old English gentleman so long as he
was young. Even Nero was loved in his first days: and there must have
been some cause to make that Christian maiden cast flowers on his
dishonourable grave. But the spirit of the great Hohenzollern smelt from
the first of the charnel. He came out to his first victory like one
broken by defeats; his strength was stripped to the bone and fearful as
a fleshless resurrection; for the worst of what could come had already
befallen him. The very construction of his kingship was built upon the
destruction of his manhood. He had known the final shame; his soul had
surrendered to force. He could not redress that wrong; he could only
repeat it and repay it. He could make t