ruler of the peninsula, but that Piedmont might disappear in the larger
whole of an emancipated Italy. Austria was expelled from Germany in 1866 in
order that Prussia might rule undisturbed. Thus, though the Austro-Prussian
War of 1866 was an essential step in the foundation of the modern German
State, its motives and results were not in the least comparable to those
which inspired and followed the Italian War of Liberation in 1859-60. In
the first place the Austrians were not foreigners but Germans, whom it was
necessary for reasons of State not of nationality to place outside the rest
of Germany. Germany had, in fact, to choose between national unity and
State unity; and she chose the latter, partly because Prussia really
decided the matter for her, partly because she realised that the
establishment of a strong German State was the essential prelude to the
creation of a strong united nation. Austria had to be shut out in 1866 in
order that she might be received back again at some later date on Germany's
own terms. In the second place Austria was in no sense the oppressor of
Germany as she had been of Italy. She was simply the presiding member of
the German Confederation who, as the rival of Prussia, as the inheritor of
the mediaeval imperial tradition, as the ruler of millions of non-Germanic
people, would have rendered the problem of German unification almost
insoluble. It was therefore necessary to get rid of her as gently and as
politely as possible. After the crushing victory at Koeniggraetz, Bismarck
treated Prussia's ancient foe with extraordinary leniency; for he had
already planned the Dual Alliance in his mind; knowing as he did that,
though in Germany Austria might be an inconvenient rival to Prussia, in
Europe she was the indispensable ally of Germany. And so, though the
ramshackle old German imperial castle was divided in two, and the northern
portion, at any rate, brought thoroughly up to date, the neighbours still
lived side by side in a "semi-detached" kind of way. It would be a mistake
then to call the war of 1866 a war of deliverance. Indeed, since the defeat
of Napoleon at Leipzig, Germany has had no such war. That is in a great
measure her national tragedy. Italian nationalism was spiritualised by the
very fact that it had to struggle for decades against a foreign oppressor,
and the foundations of her unity were laid on the heroic memories of her
efforts to expel the intruder. This spiritualisation, the