the present
day). The Prince-Bishop of Liege had committed the heinous crime of
resisting the impressment of his subjects kidnapped by the recruiting
sergeants of the Prussian King. On the strength of that theory,
Frederick attacked the defenceless daughter of the Austrian Emperor
who had saved his life at Custrin. On the strength of that theory he
betrayed every one of his allies. On the strength of that theory he
committed his most odious crime--he murdered the Polish nation.

V.

We are told that Frederick the Great was an incomparable political
virtuoso. We are told that he showed heroic fortitude in disaster,
after Kollin and Kunersdorff. But so did Caesar Borgia after the sudden
death of Alexander VI. We are told that he was tolerant of all creeds.
But that was only because he disbelieved all creeds, and he believed,
with Gibbon, that "all creeds are equally useful to the statesman." We
are reminded that he was an amazing economist, husbanding and
developing the national finances. But his finances were only the
sinews of war. We are told that he protected literature and art, but,
like religion, he found literature an instrument useful for his
political designs. We are reminded that he was himself the servant of
the State. But in serving the State he only served his own interests,
because the State was incarnated in himself, and in husbanding his
resources he was only acting like a miser who is adding to his hoard.
We are finally told that as the result of his life-work Frederick
succeeded in creating the most marvellous military machine of modern
times. We forget that, as is the way with most military machines, the
Prussian machine ten years after Frederick's death had become a
pitiful wreck in the hands of his immediate successor, and that it
required the genius of Bismarck to manufacture another Prussian
military machine to be used once more for the enslavement of Europe.

CHAPTER VI

THE APOTHEOSIS OF GOETHE

No less than three books on Goethe have been issued in the course of
the last few months, and the fact is sufficient evidence that the cult
of the Olympian Jupiter of Weimar, which was first inaugurated eighty
years ago by Carlyle, is in no danger of dying out in England.
Professor Hume Brown has given us a penetrating and judicious study of
Goethe's youth, such as one had a right to expect from the eminent
Scottish historian.[17] Mr. Joseph McCabe has given us a comprehensive
survey of G