ailure. Bismarck, a born realist in politics, grown
up in the Prussian tradition, trained in the diplomatic tradition by
Gortschakov, made the calamitous choice. He made us safe for certain
decades; but it was only an intuitive policy in the manner of
Stein[23] that could have saved us for centuries.

In the midst of self-administered and self-determining nations the
German people, from lack of self-consciousness, indolence of will and
innate servility remained under a patriarchal system of government, a
minor under tutelage of divinely-appointed dynasties and ruling
classes. In the childish movement of the educated bourgeoisie of 1848
Bismarck saw only the helpless and Utopian, but not the symbolic side,
which Marx might have shown him. His practical spirit judged with a
smile that a handful of peasantry and grenadiers would suffice to
bring to reason this dynastically-minded people. It was only too true;
although the bulk of this people had not for thirty years been formed
by the peasant class, and although he himself had learned how to make
use of the power of the modern industrial State in peasant disguise.
And so he refused to allow his countrymen to come of age; broke, with
the superiority of genius, and with the weapons of success and
authority, the incompetent forces that resisted him; created, by the
magical mechanism of his Constitution, the German Empire as a mere
continuation of the Prussian bureaucratic State reinforced, by the
self-glorifying dynasties, with the whole volume of the still existing
and justly appreciated habit of obedience; and annihilated for a
generation every aspiration for freedom by branding it with the stain
of moral and social depravity. Our political worthlessness and
immaturity came to its climax in the race of office-climbers in 1880,
which in 1900 gave place to the battle-fleet patriotism of the great
capitalists.

A self-administered and a self-determining nation--such as the nations
of the world, except ourselves, Austria and Russia, were, on the
whole, at the turn of the century--would have been able to carry on a
sound and steadfast policy in economics and public affairs, and to
enjoy the confidence of the world, as little begrudged as America. On
the other hand, a dangerous warship, armed upon an unexampled scale,
given to backward movements and commanded by an uncontrollable sovran
dilettante, could only expect sooner or later to be expelled from the
harbour of the nation