zement. If there ever was a purely military monarchy, it is
Prussia; and this kingdom has been to Europe what Sparta was to Greece.
All the successors of Frederic have followed out his policy with
singular tenacity. All their habits and associations have been military.
The army has been the centre of their pride, ambition, and hope. They
have made their country one vast military camp. They have exempted no
classes from military services; they have honored and exalted the army
more than any other interest. The principal people of the land are
generals. The resources of the kingdom are expended in standing armies;
and these are a perpetual menace. A network of military machinery
controls all other pursuits and interests. The peasant is a military
slave. The student of the university can be summoned to a military camp.
Precedence in rank is given to military men over merchant princes, over
learned professors, over distinguished jurists. The genius of the nation
has been directed to the perfection of military discipline and military
weapons. The government is always prepared for war, and has been rarely
averse to it. It has ever been ready to seize a province or pick a
quarrel. The late war with France was as much the fault of Prussia as of
the government of Napoleon. The great idea of Prussia is military
aggrandizement; it is no longer a small kingdom, but a great empire,
more powerful than either Austria or France. It believes in new
annexations, until all Germany shall be united under a Prussian Kaiser.
What Rome became, Prussia aspires to be. The spirit, the animus, of
Prussia is military power. Travel in that kingdom,--everywhere are
soldiers, military schools, camps, arsenals, fortresses, reviews. And
this military spirit, evident during the last hundred years, has made
the military classes arrogant, austere, mechanical, contemptuous. This
spirit pervades the nation. It despises other nations as much as France
did in the last century, or England after the wars of Napoleon.

But the great peculiarity of this military spirit is seen in the large
standing armies, which dry up the resources of the nation and make war a
perpetual necessity, at least a perpetual fear. It may be urged that
these armies are necessary to the protection of the state,--that if they
were disbanded, then France, or some other power, would arise and avenge
their injuries, and cripple a state so potent to do evil. It may be so;
but still the evils ge