It is one of the most appalling misunderstandings of history. Like Faust, the German people have sold their soul to Mephistopheles: Bismarck. And they have sold it for power. They are now paying the price. As in the wonderful old ballad of Burger, the Prussian horseman has taken the maiden “Germania” on his saddle. The death’s-head hussar has carried her away on his wild career through space until he has brought her to the gates of Hell.
It has thus been the fate of the German nation, as of other European nations, to work and fight for the aggrandizement of the King of Prussia. A section of the people, the Social Democrats and the Liberals, have made fitful and impotent efforts to free themselves from the tyranny of the Hohenzollern. What they have not succeeded in doing, Europe is now doing for them. In the fulness of time, Europe has arisen to crush the Hohenzollern, to kill the “Spirit of the Prussian Hive.” The war will result in the enfranchisement of Germany as it will result in the enfranchisement of Poland and Serbia. Did the history of the world ever present so tragic a paradox? Twelve million heroes are fighting the German Government. Millions of the manhood of the civilized world are laying down their lives on all the battlefields of Europe and all the high seas of the world, mainly in order to make the German people free.
XIII.—JUDGMENT ON THE HOHENZOLLERN STATE.
In 1807, after the crushing defeat inflicted by Napoleon on the Prussian armies at Jena, when the Military Monarchy crumbled to pieces in one day like a house of cards, Joseph de Maistre, the most profound and the most prophetic political thinker of his age, wrote the following significant lines from St. Petersburg. To realize the full significance of the judgment, one must remember that Count de Maistre was a fanatic supporter of the old monarchic order. He hated Napoleon with a bitter hatred, but he hated Prussia more:
“Ever since I have started to reason, I have felt a special aversion for Frederick II., whom a frenzied generation has been in a hurry to proclaim a great man, but who was really no more than a _great Prussian_. Posterity will consider this Prince as one of the greatest enemies of the human species that has ever lived. His monarchy, which had inherited his spirit, had become an argument against Providence. To-day that argument has been converted into a tangible proof of eternal justice. This famous structure built with blood and mud, with debased coin and base libels, has crumbled in the twinkle of an eye.”[12]