tion, the
whole of which, for convenience's sake, we will call Prussia) on the
very day when King William was shouldering aside so roughly at Ems
Benedetti and the famous French demands. The things to which I gave
attention for the most part were the things which belong to peace;
yet as I arrange my recollections I find that something military runs
through the whole of them. As one's letters when he has read them are
filed away on the pointed wire standing on the desk, so as regards my
Prussian experiences everything seems to have been filed away on the
spike of a helmet.

Going out early one May morning to get my first sight of Berlin, I
stood presently in a broad avenue. In the centre ran a wide promenade
lined with tall, full-foliaged trees, with a crowded roadway on each
side bordered by stately buildings. Close by me a colossal equestrian
statue in bronze towered up till the head of the rider was on a level
with the eaves of the houses. The rider was in cocked hat, booted and
spurred, the eye turned sharp to the left as if reconnoitring, the
attitude alert, life-like, as if he might dismount any moment if he
chose. In the distance down the long perspective of trees was a lofty
gate supported by columns, with a figure of Victory on the top in a
chariot drawn by horses. Close at hand again, under the porch of a
square strong structure, stood two straight sentinels. An officer
passed in a carriage on the farther side of the avenue. Instantly
the two sentinels stepped back in concert as if the same clock-work
regulated their movements, brought their shining pieces with perfect
precision to the "present," stood for an instant as if hewn from
stone, the spiked helmets above the blond faces inclining backward at
the same angle, then precisely together fell into the old position.
The street was "Unter den Linden." The tall statue was the memorial
of Frederick the Great. The gate down the long vista was the
Brandenburger Thor, surmounted by the charioted Victory which Napoleon
carried to Paris after Jena and which came back after Waterloo. The
solid building was the palace of iron-grey old King William; and when
the clock-work sentinels went through their salute, I got my first
sight of that famous Prussian discipline, against which before
the summer was through supple France was to crush its teeth all to
fragments, like a viper that has incautiously bitten at a file.

There never was a place with aspect more military tha