one pot with the French revolution,
and liberalism was coupled with the cause of the Poles, because we
were lacking in political perspicacity. Such feelings were ingrained
in our citizens at that time. I am thinking especially of the citizens
of Berlin. If today you ask the opinion of your forty-eight million
fellow-countrymen, and compare their views and those of the bulk of
the German army with the bugbear which had found lodging in German
hearts at the time of Platen's Polish songs, you surely cannot
despair of further development. We may, you must agree, register
progress, although it is slow and there are lapses. It is like
climbing a sandy hill or walking in the lava of Mount Vesuvius. One
often glides back, but on the whole one is advancing. Your position
will grow the stronger the more vigorously developed our sense of
nationality will become. I ask of you, do not despair if there are
clouds in the sky, especially in this rainy year which has saddened
the farmers. They will disappear, and the union of the Warthe and the
Vistula with Germany is irrefragable.

For centuries we have existed without Alsace-Lorraine, but no one yet
has dared to think of what our existence would be if today a new
kingdom of _Poland_ were founded. Formerly it was a passive power.
Today it would be an active enemy supported by the rest of Europe. As
long as it would not have gained possession of Danzig, Thorn, and West
Prussia, and I know not what else the excitable Polish mind might
crave, it would always be the ally of our enemies. It indicates,
therefore, insufficient political skill or political ignorance if we
rely in any way on the Polish nobles for the safety of our eastern
frontier, or if we think that we can win them to fight anywhere for
German possessions, sword in hand. This is an Utopian idea. The only
thing which we and you, gentlemen, can do under present conditions,
and which we can learn from the Poles, is to cling to one another. The
Poles, too, have parties, and used to show this even more
unfortunately than we, but all their parties disappear as soon as a
national question is broached. I wish the same would come to be true
of us, and that in national questions we would belong primarily, not
to a party, but to the nation. Let us be of as divergent opinions as
we choose, but when in our eastern provinces the question arises:
"German or Polish," then let the party feuds be laid aside until, as
the Berliners say, "After