al position and rights. The edict of 1807 was in reality
a land reform bill, and gave for the first time free trade in land in
Prussia. It was vom Stein, a Bismarck born too soon, who induced
Frederick William II, King of Prussia, and grandson of the Great
Elector, to abolish serfdom, to open the civil service to all classes,
and to concede certain municipal rights to the towns. But vom Stein
was dismissed from the service of his weak-kneed sovereign on the
ground that he was an enemy of France, and was obliged to take refuge
in Russia. Like other martyrs, his efforts watered the political earth
for a fruitful harvest.

It is well to know where we are in the world's culture and striving
when we speak of other nations. What were we doing, what was the rest
of the world doing, in those days when the Hanoverian peasant's son,
Scharnhorst, and Clausewitz were about to lay the foundations of this
German army, now the most perfect machine of its kind in the world?
These were the days prepared for by Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin
Franklin, Voltaire, Rousseau; by Pitt and Louis XV, and George III;
the days of near memories of Wolfe, Montcalm, and Clive; days when
Hogarth was caricaturing London; days when the petticoats of the
Pompadour swept both India and Canada into the possession of England.
These names and the atmosphere they produce, show by comparison how
rough a fellow was this Prussia of only a hundred years ago. He had
not come into the circle of the polite or of the political world. He
was tumbling about, un-licked, untaught, inexperienced, already
forgetful of the training of the greatest school-master of the
previous century, Frederick the Great, who had made a man of him.

We were already politicians to a man in those days, and the Englishman
Pitt was map-maker, by special warrant, to all Europe.

When the Prussians were serfs politically, our House of
Representatives, in 1796, debated whether to insert in their reply to
the President's speech the remark that "this nation is the freest and
most enlightened in the world." It is true that this was at the time
when Europe was producing Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Hegel,
Fichte, Mozart, Haydn, Herschel, and about ready to introduce Walter
Scott, Wordsworth, Shelley, Heine, Balzac, Beethoven, and Cuvier; when
Turner was painting, Watt building the steam-engine, Napoleon in
command of the French armies, and Nelson of the British fleet; but
this bombastic babble of