fly grasp the political character following upon
the history of this land. The chief noble of "Borussia," the governing
duke, acquired, not from the empire nor perhaps in the eyes of Europe,
but from the Polish monarchy, the title of king, and it must never be
forgotten that the capital at Berlin, and the "Mark"--that is, the
frontier march--of Brandenburg, though now the centre, are neither the
origins nor the pride of the Hohenzollern power. They were kings of
Prussia because Prussia was extraneous to the European system. There
came a moment, as I have pointed out in an earlier page in this book,
when the Prussian kingship and the electorate of Brandenburg coincided
in one person. All men of education know, and all men whatsoever feel,
what influence an historical origin will have upon national outlook.
East Prussia, therefore, remains to-day something of a political
fetish. Its towns may be called colonies of the Germans, the
birthplaces or the residences of men famous in the German story. Its
country-sides, although still largely inhabited by a population of
servile memories and habits not thoroughly welded with their masters,
do not take up great space in the view the German takes of the region.
He sees rather the German landowner, the German bailiff, the German
schoolmaster, and the numerous German tenants of the wealthier type
who, though a minority, form the chief part of this social system. We
shall see later what this miscalculation cost the great landowners
during the Russian invasion, but we must note in passing that it is a
miscalculation common to every people. Only that which is articulate
in the States stands out large in the social perspective during
periods of order and of peace.

The Prussian royal house, the Prussian aristocracy, have then for this
bastion towards the east an especial regard, which has not been
without its sentimental influence upon the course of the war; and that
regard is very highly increased by the artificial political boundaries
of modern times.

East Prussia is, for the Germans as a whole, their rampart against the
Slav; and though, beyond the present purely political and only
century-old frontier, a large German-speaking population is to be
discovered (especially in the towns under Russian rule), yet such is
the influence of a map upon a people essentially bookish in their
information, that East Prussia stands to the whole German Empire, as
well as to its wealthier inhabitan