red tape in a way that
even the more patient workman of the Continent cannot endure.

In a large measure, then, the German Government has failed in its
efforts to cure the industrial classes of their socialistic ideas. But
its determination to attach them to the new German Empire, and to make
that Empire the leading industrial State of the Continent, has had a
complete triumph. So far as education, technical training, research, and
enlightened laws can make a nation great, Germany is surely on the high
road to national and industrial supremacy.

It is a strange contrast that meets our eyes if we look back to the
years before the advent of King William and Bismarck to power. In the
dark days of the previous reign Germany was weak, divided, and helpless.
In regard to political life and industry she was still almost in
swaddling-clothes; and her struggles to escape from the irksome
restraints of the old Confederation seemed likely to be as futile as
they had been since the year 1815. But the advent of the King and his
sturdy helper to power speedily changed the situation. The political
problems were grappled with one by one, and were trenchantly solved.
Union was won by Bismarck's diplomacy and Prussia's sword; and when the
longed-for goal was reached in seven momentous years, the same qualities
were brought to bear on the difficult task of consolidating that union.
Those qualities were the courage and honesty of purpose that the House
of Hohenzollern has always displayed since the days of the Great
Elector; added to these were rarer gifts, namely, the width of view, the
eagle foresight, the strength of will, the skill in the choice of means,
that made up the imposing personality of Bismarck. It was with an eye to
him, and to the astonishing triumphs wrought by his diplomacy over
France, that a diplomatist thus summed up the results of the year 1870:
"Europe has lost a mistress, but she has got a master."

After the lapse of a generation that has been weighted with the cuirass
of Militarism, we are able to appreciate the force of that remark.
Equally true is it that the formation of the German Empire has not added
to the culture and the inner happiness of the German people. The days
of quiet culture and happiness are gone; and in their place has come a
straining after ambitious aims which is a heavy drag even on the
vitality of the Teutonic race. Still, whether for good or for evil, the
unification of Germany must stand