eat found himself in so desperate a
position that he had resolved on committing suicide. Again, after
Jena, Berlin was occupied by the French, and for five years remained
under the yoke. Insecurity has been for generations the law of
Prussian existence. The Prussian State has known many ups and downs
and has passed through many tragic vicissitudes. They managed to turn
geographical and military necessities to the advantage of their
dynastic ambitions. What was at first commanded by the instinct of
self-preservation became afterwards a habit, a tradition, and a
systematic policy. They discovered that the best way to maintain an
efficient defensive was to transform it into a vigorous offensive.
They discovered that the best means of living safely was to live
dangerously. They discovered, in the words of Treitschke, that "the
one mortal sin for a State was to be weak."

VIII.--PRUSSIA AS A PREDATORY STATE.

Not only is Prussia a military State, it is also a predatory State.
All the great Powers of Europe have been in a sense military States.
But to them all war has only been a means to an end, and often a means
to higher and unselfish ends. The Spaniards were a military nation,
but their wars were crusades against the Moor. The Russians have been
a military nation, but their wars were crusades against the Turk or
wars for the liberation of the Serbians, the Bulgarians, and the
Greeks. The French have been a military nation, but they fought for a
chivalrous ideal, for adventure, for humanity. Even Napoleon's wars of
conquest were really wars for the establishment of democracy. The
Corsican was the champion and the testamentary executor of the French
Revolution.

The peculiarity of the Prussian State is that it has been from the
beginning a predatory State. The Hohenzollerns have ever waged war
mainly for spoliation and booty. Not once have they waged war for an
ideal or for a principle.

The German Kaiser delights to appear in the garb of the medieval
knight. He wears three hundred appropriate uniforms. A German wit has
said that he wears the uniform of an English Admiral when he visits an
aquarium, and that he dons the uniform of an English Field-Marshal
when he eats an English plum-pudding. Amongst those three hundred
disguises there is none which is more popular in Germany than that of
the Modern Lohengrin bestriding the world in glittering armour. The
Kaiser lacks the democratic gift of humour, and does not seem