"But how do you bear it all?" you say to your Prussian friend, with whom you stand looking on at the base of Billow's statue. "Is not this enormous preparation for bloodshed something dreadful? Then the tax on the country to support it all, the withdrawing of such a multitude from the employments of peace." Your friend, who had been a soldier himself, would answer: "We bear it because we must. It is the price of our existence, and we have got used to it; and, after all, with the hardship come great benefits. Every able-bodied young Prussian must serve as a soldier, be he noble or low-born, rich or poor. If he cannot read or write, he must learn. He must be punctual, neat, temperate, and so gets valuable habits. His body is trained to be strong and supple. Shoemaker and banker's son, count, tailor, and farmer march together, and community of feeling comes about. The great traditions of Prussian history are the atmosphere they breathe, and they become patriotic. The soldier must put off marrying, perhaps half forget his trade, and come into life poor; for who can save on nine cents a day, with board and clothes? But it is a wonder if he is not a healthy, well-trained, patriotic man." So talked your Prussian; and however much of a peace-man you might be, you could not help owning there was some truth in it. If you bought a suit of clothes, the tailor jumped up from his cross-legged position, prompt and full-chested, with tan on his face he got in campaigning; and it is hard to say he had lost more than he gained in his army training. If you went into a school, the teacher, with a close-clipped beard and vigorous gait, who had a scar on his face from Königgrätz, seemed none the worse for it, though he might have read a few books the less and lost his student pallor. At any rate, bad or good, so it was; and so, said the Prussian, it must be. Eternal vigilance and preparation! I went in one day to the arsenal. The flags which Prussian armies had taken from almost every nation in Europe were ranged against the walls by the hundred; shot-shattered rags of silk, white standards of Austria embroidered with gold, Bavaria's blue checker, above all the great Napoleonic symbol, the N surrounded by its wreath. This was the memorable tapestry that hung the walls, and opposite glittered the waiting barrels and bayonets till one could almost believe them conscious, and burning to do as much as the flintlocks that won the standards. There was a needle-gun there or somewhere for every able-bodied man, and somewhere else uniform and equipments. When I landed in February on the bank of the Weser, the most prominent object was the redoubt with the North German flag. When in midsummer I crossed the Bavarian frontier among a softer people, the last marked object was the old stronghold of Coburg, battered by siege after siege for a thousand years. It was the spiked helmet at the entrance and again at the exit; and from entrance to exit, few places or times were free from some martial suggestion. It was a nation that had come to power mainly through war, and been schooled into the belief that its mailed fists alone could guarantee its life.