immediate connection with the workings
of the political machine. Upon foreign politics, with which the public
at that time occupied itself but little, my views, as regards the War of
Liberation, were taken from the standpoint of a Prussian officer. On
looking at the map, the Possession of Strasburg by France exasperated
me, and a visit to Heidelberg, Spires, and the Palatinate made me feel
revengeful and militant. In the period before 1848 succeed in laying a
coat of European varnish over the specifically Prussian bureaucrat. How
these observations acted in practice is clearly shown when we go through
the list of our diplomatists of those days: one is astonished to find so
few native Prussians among them. The fact of being the son of a foreign
ambassador accredited to Berlin was of itself ground for preference. The
diplomatists who had grown up in small courts and had been taken into
the Prussian service had not infrequently the advantage over natives of
greater assurance in Court circles and a greater absence of shyness. An
especial example of this tendency was Herr von Schleinitz. In the list
we find also members of noble houses in whom descent supplied the place
of talent. I scarcely remember from the period when I was appointed to
Frankfort anyone of Prussian descent being appointed chief of an
important mission, except myself, Baron Carl von Werther, Canitz, and
Count Max Hatzfeldt (who had a French wife). Foreign names were at a
premium: Brassier, Perponcher, Savigny, Oriola. It was presumed that
they had greater fluency in French, and they were more out of the
common. Another feature was the disinclination to accept personal
responsibility when not covered by unmistakable instructions, just as
was the case in the military service in 1806 in the old school of the
Frederickian period. Even in those days we were breeding stuff for
officers, even as high as the rank of regimental commander, to a pitch
of perfection attained by no other state; but beyond that rank the
native Prussian blood was no longer fertile in talents, as in the time
of Frederick the Great. Our most successful commanders, Bluecher,
Gneisenau, Moltke, Goeben, were not original Prussian products, any more
than Stein, Hardenberg, Motz, and Grolmann in the Civil Service. It is
as though our statesmen, like the trees in nurseries, needed
transplanting in order that their roots might find full development.

Ancillon advised me first of all to pass my ex