In view of the attitude of France, our national sense of honor
compelled us, in my opinion, to go to war; and if we did not act
according to the demands of this feeling, we should lose, when on the
way to its completion, the entire impetus towards our national
development won in 1866 while the German national feeling south of the
Main, aroused by our military successes in 1866, and shown by the
readiness of the southern states to enter the alliances, would have to
grow cold again. The German feeling, which in the southern states
lived long with the individual and dynastic state feeling, had, up to
1866, silenced its political conscience to a certain degree with the
fiction of a collective Germany under the leadership of Austria,
partly from South German preference for the old imperial State, partly
in the belief of her military superiority to Prussia. After events had
shown the incorrectness of that calculation, the very helplessness in
which the South German states had been left by Austria at the
conclusion of peace was a motive for the political Damascus that lay
between Varnbueler's "_Vae victis_" and the willing conclusion of the
offensive and defensive alliance with Prussia. It was confidence in
the Germanic power developed by means of Prussia, and the attraction
which is inherent in a brave and resolute policy if it is successful,
and then proceeds within reasonable and honorable limits. This nimbus
had been won by Prussia; it would have been lost irrevocably, or at
all events for a long time, if in a question of national honor the
opinion gained ground among the people that the French insult, _La
Prusse cane_, had a foundation in fact.

In the same psychological train of thought in which during the Danish
war in 1864 I desired, for political reasons, that precedence should
be given not to the old Prussian, but to the Westphalian battalions,
who so far had had no opportunity of proving their courage under
Prussian leadership, and regretted that Prince Frederick Charles had
acted contrary to my wish, did I feel convinced that the gulf, which
diverse dynastic and family influences and different habits of life
had in the course of history created between the south and north of
the Fatherland, could not be more effectually bridged over than by a
joint national war against the neighbor who had been aggressive for
many centuries. I remembered that even in the short period from 1813
to 1815, from Leipzig and Hanau to