" than were
the veterans (however glorious) of the drilled and disciplined
Prussian army. Bismarck was divided between two creeds: he knew too
much psychology to believe solely in the supremacy of pipeclay, but he
was at the same time not averse to the creation of a revived German
empire by his own genius.

Hence chiefly the confusion; for men's minds were confused,--in France
determinedly, and even in Germany, (owing to the still enduring force
of obsolete opinions and antiquated habits of thought and action)
uncertain.

When the war had once clearly shown what its end would be, they were
few who could appreciate it. In France where were they who had ever
heard the truth about "1806 and Jena"? or who, after the 4th
September, '70, were capable of realizing that the just retribution
for Jena was Sedan? All glory was given to one man--to Bismarck.
For the six long months, till March, '71, he was the
arch-destroyer--nothing else was taken into account; if _he_ chose to
establish a new holy Roman empire, of course he could do it; but it
would be the work of his Titanic will, and nothing on earth could
resist--_since France could not!_ Thus reasoned French vanity, and if
this curious condition of the public mind in France be not understood,
the reconstitution of united Germany into a great cohesive state will
never be rightly attained as a matter of fact.

France, therefore, continued (and did so until quite lately) to hold
to the individual or accidental theory of a military unity achieved by
fortuitous victories, to which the constant agitations of a whole
people for hundreds of years, were in no sense conducive. Another fact
that must also be acknowledged is, that this theory once firmly
established, any remorse for the mysterious crimes of Napoleon I. was
diminished if not erased. On the contrary, his conquests, his violent
despotism, his wonderful supremacy--unjust in every sense, immoral,
tyrannical, equally acquired and forfeited by the Corsican Invader,
was regarded as an example; when defeat had to be recognized as
undeniable, the national delusion soon came to take the form of
retrieval, and the notion gained ground that what _la chance_ or the
luck of a great statesman had put together, might, from the same
cause, be taken to pieces again!

Granted the principle of personal intervention, of the success of
either one man or of even a group of two or three leading spirits, who
was the original inventor, who t