correct, I am
convinced that it is better for us to have our defense consist of a
bold attack, and to strike the first blow now;" and if I added: "We
can more easily wage an aggressive war, and I, therefore, am asking
the Reichstag for an appropriation of a milliard, or half a milliard,
marks to engage in a war against our two neighbors,"--then I do not
know, gentlemen, whether you would have enough confidence in me to
grant my request, but I hope you would not have it.

But, if you had, it would not satisfy me. If we Germans wish to wage a
war with the full effect of our national strength, it must be a war
which satisfies all who take part in it, all who sacrifice anything
for it, in short the whole nation. It must be a national war, a war
carried on with the enthusiasm of 1870, when we were foully attacked.
I still remember the ear splitting, joyful shouts in the station at
Koeln. It was the same all the way from Berlin to Koeln, in Berlin
itself. The waves of popular approval bore us into the war, whether or
no we wished it. That is the way it must be, if a popular force like
ours is to show what it can do. It will, however, be very difficult to
prove to the provinces and the imperial states and their inhabitants
that the war is unavoidable, and has to be. People will ask: "Are you
so sure? Who can tell?" In short, when we make an attack, the whole
weight of all imponderables, which weigh far heavier than material
weights, will be on the side of our opponents whom we have attacked.
France will be bristling with arms way down to the Pyrenees. The same
will take place everywhere. A war into which we are not borne by the
will of the people will be waged, to be sure, if it has been declared
by the constituted authorities who deemed it necessary; it will even
be waged pluckily, and possibly victoriously, after we have once
smelled fire and tasted blood, but it will lack from the beginning the
nerve and enthusiasm of a war in which we are attacked. In such a one
the whole of Germany from Memel to the Alpine Lakes will flare up like
a powder mine; it will be bristling with guns, and no enemy will dare
to engage this _furor teutonicus_ which develops when we are attacked.

[Illustration: ANTON VON WERNER WILLIAM I ON HIS DEATHBED]

We cannot afford to lose this factor of preeminence even if many
military men--not only ours but others as well--believe that today we
are superior to our future opponents. Our own officers beli