rresistible for
fresh conflicts? The excuse might easily have been found; Bismarck might
have put on his banner, "The Union of All Germans in One State"; he
might have recalled and reawakened the enthusiasm of fifty years ago; he
might have reminded the people that there were still in Holland and in
Switzerland, in Austria and in Russia, Germans who were separated from
their country, and languishing under a foreign rule. Had he been an
idealist he would have done so, and raised in Germany a cry like that of
the Italian Irredentists. Or he might have claimed for his country its
natural boundaries; after freeing the upper waters of the Rhine from
foreign dominion he might have claimed that the great river should flow
to the sea, German. This is what Frenchmen had done under similar
circumstances, but he was not the man to repeat the crimes and blunders
of Louis and Napoleon.

He knew that Germany desired peace; a new generation must grow up in the
new order of things; the old wounds must be healed by time, the old
divisions forgotten; long years of common work must cement the alliances
that he had made, till the jealousy of the defeated was appeased and the
new Empire had become as firm and indissoluble as any other State in
Europe.

The chief danger came from France; in that unhappy country the cry for
revenge seemed the only link with the pride which had been so rudely
overthrown. The defeat and the disgrace could not be forgotten; the
recovery of the lost provinces was the desire of the nation, and the
programme of every party. As we have seen, the German statesmen had
foreseen the danger and deliberately defied it. They cared not for the
hostility of France, now that they need not fear her power. _Oderint dum
metuant._ Against French demands for restitution they presented a firm
and unchangeable negative; it was kinder so and juster, to allow no
opening for hope, no loophole for negotiation, no intervention by other
Powers. Alsace-Lorraine were German by the right of the hundred thousand
German soldiers who had perished to conquer them. Any appearance of
weakness would have led to hopes which could never be realised,
discussions which could have had no result. The answer to all
suggestions was to be found in the strength of Germany; the only
diplomacy was to make the army so strong that no French statesman, not
even the mob of Paris, could dream of undertaking single-handed a war of
revenge.

This was not enough;