you grow old, your
attitude will ever be German-national because it is so today--whatever
form our institutions may have taken in the meanwhile. We do not
wilfully dismiss from our hearts the love of national sentiments; we
do not lose them when we emigrate. I know instances of hundreds of
thousands of Germans from America, South Africa, and Australia who are
today bound to the fatherland with the same enthusiasm which carried
many of them to the war.

We had to win our national independence in difficult wars. The
preparation, the prologue, was the Holstein war. We had to fight with
Austria for a settlement; no court of law could have given us a decree
of separation; we had to fight. That we were facing a French war after
our victory at Sadowa could not remain in doubt for anyone who knew
the conditions of Europe. It was, however, desirable not to wage this
war too soon nor before we had garnered to some extent the fruits of
our North-German union. After the war had been waged everybody here
was saying that within five years we should have to wage the next war.
This was to be feared, it is true, but I have ever since considered it
to be my duty to prevent it. We Germans had no longer any reason for
war. We had what we needed. To fight for more, from a lust of conquest
and for the annexation of countries which were not necessary for us,
always appeared to me like an atrocity; I am tempted to say like a
Bonapartistic and foreign atrocity, alien to the Germanic sense of
justice.

Consequently since we rebuilt and enlarged our house according to our
needs, I have always been a man of peace, nor have I shrunk from small
sacrifices. The strong man can afford to yield at times. Neither the
Caroline Islands nor Samoa were worth a war, however much stress I
have always laid on our colonial development. We did not stand in need
of glory won in battles, nor of prestige. This indeed is the
superiority of the German character over all others, that it is
satisfied when it can acknowledge its own worth, and has no need of
recognition, authority, or privilege. It is self-sufficient. This is
the course I have steered, and in politics it is much easier to say
what one should avoid than to say what one should do. Certain
principles of honesty and courage forbid one to do certain things,
just as the access to certain fields is interdicted in the army
maneuvers. But the decision as to what has to be done is a very
different matter, and