no one can be sure of it beforehand, for
politics are a task which can be compared only to the navigation of
unknown waters. One does not know what the weather will be or how the
currents will flow, nor what storms will be raging. There is in
politics this additional factor of uncertainty that one is largely
dependent on the decisions of others on whom one has counted and who
have failed. One never can act with complete independence. And, when
our friends whose assistance we need, although we cannot guarantee it,
change their minds, our whole plan has failed. Positive enterprises
are, therefore, very difficult in politics, and when they succeed you
should be grateful to God who has given His blessing, and not find
fault with details which one or the other may regret, but accept the
situation as God has made it. For man cannot create or direct the
stream of time. He can sail on it and steer his craft with more or
less skill, be stranded and shipwrecked, or make a favorable port.

Since we now have made a favorable port, as I conclude from the
predominant although not unanimous opinion of my countrymen, whose
approval is all we have worked for, let us be satisfied, and let us
keep and cherish what we have won in an Emperor and an empire as it
is, and not as some individuals may wish it should be, with other
institutions, and a little bit more of this or that religious or
social detail that they may have at heart. Let us be careful to keep
what we have, lest we lose it because we do not know how to appreciate
it. Germany once was a powerful empire under the Carolingians, the
Saxons, and the Hohenstaufens, and when she lost her place, five, yes
six hundred years passed before she regained the use of her legs--if I
may say so. Political and geological developments are equally slow.
Layers are deposited one on the other, forming new banks and new
mountains. But I should like to ask especially the young gentlemen:
Do not yield too much to the German love of criticism! Accept what God
has given us, and what we have toiled to garner, while the rest of
Europe--I cannot say attacked us, but ominously stood at attention. It
was not easy. If we had been cited before the European Council of
Elders before our French affairs were settled, we should not have
fared nearly so well; and it was my task to avoid this if I possibly
could. It is natural that not everything which everybody wished could
be obtained under these conditions, and I