to be
aware of the incongruity of the Lohengrin masquerade. A Prussian King
cannot honestly play the part of a knight in quest of the Holy Grail.
Chivalry and Prussianism, the crusading spirit and the predatory
spirit, are contradictory terms.

The most exalted Order of the Prussian dynast is the Order of the
Black Eagle. The Hohenzollerns could not have chosen a more fitting
emblem than that of the sinister bird of prey. For they have been
pre-eminently the men of prey amongst modern dynasts. Every province
of their dominions has been stolen from their neighbours. They
secularized and stole the Church property of the Teutonic Order. They
stole Silesia from Austria. They acquired Posen by murdering a noble
nation. They stole Hanover from its lawful rulers. They stole
Schleswig-Holstein from the Danes. They wrested Alsace-Lorraine from
the French.

Circumstances in modern times seem to have singularly favoured their
designs of conquest. To outward appearance they were threatened by
powerful enemies, but those enemies looked far more formidable than
they appeared. On the Far Western boundary, the feeble ecclesiastical
Princes of Cologne, Treves, and Mayence ruled over the smiling fields
and vineyards of the Rhine provinces. On every side Germany was broken
up into petty principalities. The Holy Roman Empire of Germany, which
was neither Holy nor Roman nor German, and which had ceased to be an
empire, was only the shadow of a great name. Austria was perpetually
distracted by internal and external dangers. Poland was an unruly
republic. The very weakness of their neighbours was a temptation to
the Hohenzollern.

The one redoubtable enemy to the Hohenzollern dynasty was Russia. But
after the disastrous defeat of the Seven Years' War inflicted by
Russian arms, Prussia learned to control by deceit and policy a Power
which she dared not challenge, and could not hope to overcome, on the
battlefield. From the middle of the eighteenth century Prussia
concluded a dynastic alliance with the Russian dynasty. The
Hohenzollerns liberally provided their Russian brethren with German
Princes and Princesses. The Prince of Holstein, who became Tsar Peter
III., was the first German Prince of the Romanov dynasty. The little
Cinderella Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, the future Catherine the Great,
was the first of an uninterrupted line of German Princesses. The
Teutonic barons of the Baltic provinces for one hundred and fifty
years were able