is is a point in which no people in the world can compete with us--we
have the material for officers and under-officers to command this
enormous army. It is here that competition is excluded, because it
involves a peculiarly broad extension of popular culture, such as exists
in Germany and in no other country....

There is a further advantage that will result from the adoption of this
law: the very strength at which we are aiming necessarily makes us
peaceful. That sounds paradoxical, but it is true. With the powerful
machine which we are making of the German army no aggression will be
attempted. If I saw fit--assuming a different situation to exist from
that which in my conviction does exist'--to come before you here to-day
and say to you, "We are seriously menaced by France and Russia; the
prospect is that we shall be attacked: such at least is my conviction,
as a diplomatist, on the basis of the military information that we have
received; it is to our advantage to defend ourselves by anticipating the
attack, and to strike at once; an offensive war is a better one for us
to wage, and I accordingly ask the Imperial Diet for a credit of a
milliard or half a milliard, in order to undertake to-day the war
against our two neighbors,"--well, gentlemen, I do not know whether you
would have such confidence in me as to grant such a request. I hope not.
But if you did, it would not be enough for me. If we in Germany desire
to wage a war with the full effect of our national power, it must be a
war with which all who help to wage it, and all who make sacrifices for
it--with which, in a word, all the nation--must be in sympathy. It must
be a people's war; it must be a war that is carried on with the same
enthusiasm as that of 1870, when we were wickedly attacked. I remember
still the joyful shouts that rang in our ears at the Cologne station; it
was the same thing from Berlin to Cologne; it was the same thing here in
Berlin. The waves of popular approval bore us into the war, whether we
liked it or not. So it must be, if a national force like ours is to be
brought fully into operation. It will be very difficult, however, to
make it clear to the provinces, to the federal states and to their
people, that a war is inevitable, that it must come. It will be asked:
"Are you so sure of it? Who knows?" If we finally come to the point of
making the attack, all the weight of the imponderables, which weigh much
more than the material weights,