himself through the lips of
Ulrich von Hutten. Passage after passage springs from the soul of
the living Lassalle, the same Lassalle that in his boyhood dreams
would emancipate the Jews by force of arms, that in his early manhood
so deeply impressed Heine, and that so shortly afterwards
was ready to defy all the powers of the kingdom in defence
of a friendless woman. The following speech of the legendary
von Hutten is characteristic of the real Lassalle:

"O worthy Sir! Think better of the sword!
A sword, when swung in freedom's sacred cause,
Becomes the Holy Word, of which you preach,
The God, incarnate in reality.
* * * * *
And all great things, which e'er will come to pass
Will owe their final being to the sword."

In short, Lassalle was not by nature a man of the study. He was a man
of the battlefield.

The hour for battle was fast approaching. In 1859 the alliance of
Napoleon the Third and Cavour against the Austrians was consummated
and the war for the liberation and unification of Italy began. The
hopes of all true Germans for the unification of the Fatherland took
new life. Especially the survivors of '48 felt their pulses quicken.
In 1859 Lassalle revealed his own interest in contemporary politics by
the publication of his pamphlet on _The Italian War and the Duty of
Prussia_, and in the following year by his address on _Fichte's
Political Legacy and Our Own Times_. He also planned to establish a
popular newspaper in Berlin, but the scheme was abandoned in 1861, on
account of the refusal of the Prussian government to sanction the
naturalization of the man whom Lassalle desired for his associate in
the enterprise, Karl Marx. With the Prince of Prussia's accession to
the throne and the brilliant successes of the Progressive party in the
Prussian elections, men instinctively felt that the times were big
with portentous events.

Lassalle's political ideas were already well developed. He was born a
democrat. In early nineteenth-century England the young Disraeli could
hopefully plan a different course, but Lassalle in Prussia could look
for no public career as an aristocrat. Under the circumstances to be a
democrat meant also to be a republican, and, if need be, a
revolutionist. As a youth he drank deep from the idealistic springs
that inspired the republican party throughout Germany. He admired
Schiller and Fichte and, above all, Heine and Boerne. Lassalle indeed