eve that the core of the party is as sound and as
true to principle as ever it was, and that on the restoration of
international peace this will be seen to be the case. What interests
us, however, specially, at the moment of writing, is the lamentable,
yet undeniable, fact that German Social Democracy has, on this
occasion, disastrously failed to prevent the outbreak of war,
notwithstanding the vigour of its efforts to do so during the last
week of July; and still more that it has failed up to date to stem the
rising flood of militarism and jingoism in the German people. That
before many months are over the scales will fall from the eyes of the
masses of Germany I am convinced, and not less that a revolutionary
movement in Germany will be one of the signs that will herald the dawn
of a better day for Germany and for Europe. But meanwhile we must hold
our countenances in patience.

If we inquire the cause of the degeneracy we have been considering in
the German character since the war of 1870 and the creation of the new
empire--apart from those economic causes of change common to all
countries in modern civilization--the answer of those who have
followed the history of the period can hardly fail to be--Bismarck and
Prussia. We have already seen in the short historical sketch given in
the last chapter how the robber hand of Prussia, in violation of all
national treaty rights, had gradually succeeded in annexing wellnigh
all the neighbouring German territories. But, notwithstanding this,
the greater part of Germany still remained outside the Prussian
monarchy. The policy of Bismarck was first of all to cripple the rival
claimant for the hegemony of Central Europe, Austria. Her complete
subjugation being unfeasible, she had to be shut up rigorously to her
immediate dominions on the eastern side of Central Europe, in order to
leave the path clear for Bismarck, by war or subterfuge, to absorb,
under a system of nominally vassal States, the whole of the rest of
Germany into the system of the Prussian monarchy.

Now, as we know, from its very foundation the Hohenzollern-Prussian
monarchy has always been a more or less veiled despotism, based on
working through a military and bureaucratic oligarchy. The army has
been the dominant factor of the Prussian State from the beginning of
the eighteenth century onwards. Prussia has been from the beginning of
its monarchy the land of the drill-sergeant and the barracks. It is
this syste