his Prussian aristocracy is socially
exclusive, is given office both in the army and in civil life too
readily; but what an aristocracy it is! These are the men whose
families gave, often their all, to make Prussia, and then to make
Germany. Service of king and country is in their blood. They get small
remuneration for their service. There is no luxury. They spurn the
temptations of money. Hundreds and hundreds of them have never been
inside the house of a rich parvenu, nor have their women. They work as
no other servants work, they live on little, they and their women and
children; and you may count yourself happily privileged if they permit
you the intimacy of their home life.

Officers and gentlemen there are, living on two thousand five hundred
dollars a year, and most of them on much less, and their wives, as
well born as themselves, darning their socks and counting the pfennigs
with scrupulous care. These are the women whose ancestors flung
themselves against the Roman foe, beside their husbands and brothers;
these are the women who gave their jewels to save Prussia; these are
the women, with the glint of steel and the light of summer skies
braided in their eyes, who have taken their hard, self-denying part in
making Prussia, and the German Empire. No wonder they despise the mere
money-maker, no wonder they will have none of his softness for
themselves, and hate what Milton calls "lewdly pampered luxury," as a
danger to their children. They know well the moral weapons that won
for this starved, and tormented, and poverty-stricken land its present
place in the world as a great power.

"And as the fervent smith of yore
Beat out the glowing blade,
Nor wielded in the front of war
The weapons that he made,
But in the tower at home still plied
His ringing trade;

"So like a sword the son shall roam
On nobler missions sent;
And as the smith remained at home
In peaceful turret pent,
So sits the while at home the mother
Well content."

I, convinced democrat that I am, know very well that there are, and
always have been, and always will be aristocrats, for there is no
national salvation without them anywhere in the world. The aristocrats
are the same everywhere, no matter what their distinctions of title,
or whether they have none. They are those who believe that they owe
their best to God and to men, and they serve. Likewise the plebeians
are the same all over the world; whatever their pre