se heroic memories
were Germany's also in 1813-14, but the opportunity of unification was
allowed to slip by, and when the task was performed fifty years later it
was through quite other means and in a very different spirit. And yet,
though there was no one to expel, Germany could only hope to attain unity
by fighting. In 1848 she made an attempt to do so by peaceable means, and a
national Parliament actually assembled at Frankfurt to frame a constitution
for the whole country. But the attempt, noble as it was in conception,
proved a dismal failure, and it became clear that national unity in Germany
was to be won "not by speeches and majority resolutions, but by blood and
iron." The words are Bismarck's, and the task was his also. Set them beside
the words of Cavour about Italy and liberty, quoted above, or compare the
harsh unscrupulous spirit of the great German master-builder with the
spirit of Mazzini, Cavour, and Garibaldi, and you get a measure of the
difference between the developments of the national idea in Germany and in
Italy. Yet Bismarck's famous sentence expressed the truth of the matter for
Germany. Austria had been put outside the German pale, and Germany north of
the Main had accepted unity under the hegemony of Prussia, but there still
remained the four great States of South Germany to bring in. They had been
the allies of Austria in 1866, and Prussia, had she willed it, might
have incorporated them by conquest. But Bismarck saw that they must put
themselves willingly under Prussia if the German Empire was to be a stable
concern; he therefore left them alone to think it over for a while. Sooner
or later they would have to come in, since now that Austria had been
excluded there remained only the choice between dependence on France and
union with Prussia. Bismarck deliberately played upon South Germany's fear
of France, and Napoleon III's restless foreign policy admirably seconded
his efforts. But a war was necessary to bring matters to a head. The
opportunity came in 1870, and Bismarck was able to make it appear a war not
of his own choosing. The Southern States threw themselves into the arms of
Prussia; France was crushed, and Alsace-Lorraine annexed; the German Empire
was proclaimed, and modern Germany came into being. There had been no
foreigner to expel from German soil, but Bismarck found that an attack upon
France served his purpose equally well.

[Footnote 1: Perhaps it would be fairer to say that