d by Eisenach, Frankfort,
Erfurt, Weimar, Jena, and Leipzig, made this pilgrimage of intense
interest, and almost the only discord was the sight of the Leipzig
Voelkerschlacht Denkmal, probably the largest, and certainly the
ugliest monument in all the world. It has but one justification, in
that it commemorates war, and no monument ever more fully symbolized
by its own colossal crudity the moral ugliness of that most ghastly
phenomenon of human life. Let us pray that in the event of final
victory Prussia will not commission the architects of the Leipzig
monument, or the imperial designer of the Sieges-Allee to rebuild
that Gothic masterpiece, the Rheims Cathedral. That day in Leipzig
an Alsatian cartoonist, Hansi, had been sentenced to one year's
imprisonment for a harmless cartoon in a book for children, in which
the most supersensitive should have found occasion for nothing, except
a passing smile.

On the library table of the Erbprinz, I found a large book, which
proved to be a Bismarck memorial volume. It contained hundreds of
pictures glorifying and almost deifying the Iron Chancellor. One
particularly arrested my attention. It was the familiar picture of
the negotiations for peace between Bismarck and Jules Favre in the
terrible winter of 1871. The French statesman has sunk into a chair in
abject despair, struck speechless by the demands of the conqueror.
Bismarck stands triumphant and his proud bearing and arrogant manner
fail to suggest any such magnanimous courtesy as that with which Grant
accepted the sword of Lee at Appomattox. The picture breathed the very
spirit of "_vae victis_." Had a French artist painted this picture,
I could understand it, for it would serve effectively to stimulate
undying hatred in the French heart. It seemed strange that a German
artist should treat a subject, calling for a spirit of most delicate
courtesy, in a manner which represented Prussian militarism in its
most arrogant form.

This unworthy picture reminded me of a later scene in the Reichstag,
in which the Iron Chancellor, after reviewing with complacency the
profitable results of Germany's deliberately provoked wars against
Denmark, Austria, and France, added the pious ejaculation:

_Wir Deutsche fuerchten Gott sonst nichts in der Welt._
(We Germans fear God but nothing else in the world.)

It is not necessary to impeach the sincerity of this pious
glorification of the successful results of land grabbing. Th