"It was Bismarck who uttered these terrible words: 'When the unoccupied
German must give up the struggle and strife which has become dear to
him, and offer the hand of reconciliation, then he loses all joy in
life. Civil war is always the most terrible thing which any land can
have. But with us Germans it is still more terrible, because it is
fought out by us with more love for the strife than any other war.'

"Does it not sound truly horrible for the greatest benefactor of a
nation, which has to thank him for having realized its century-old dream
of unity, to say in all calm and as something quite obvious, that his
own nation engages in a civil war 'with more love' than any other war?
And wherever we look in Bismarck's speeches, the same complaint is found
which had been the eternal lamentation of Goethe--the lament over the
lack of faith and will of the Germans.

"How will it be this time? Will it be as after the Seven Years' War,
after the War of Liberation, after 1870? Will it be again all in vain?
As soon as the Fatherland is secure, will every German once again cease
to be a German in order to become some kind of -crat or -ist or -er?
This time it will be more difficult, for from this war he will return no
more into the same Fatherland. It will have expanded; the German
Fatherland will be greater. Arndt's poems must be written over again: no
longer merely 'as far as the German tongue is spoken.' Germany will
stretch beyond that limit, and in it the German will have work to do.

"In his speech Bismarck spoke of the 'unoccupied'; but in all
probability after this war, for years to come, there will be no
'unoccupied' Germans. They will be fully occupied with the new
organization. What the sword has won, we shall keep. 'The pike in the
European carp-pond,' said Bismarck once, 'prevent us from becoming carp.
They compel us to exertions which voluntarily we should hardly be
willing to make. They compel us to hold together, which is in direct
contradiction to our innermost nature.'

"As we cannot change our nature, it will be good if we take over for
good and all a number--a very considerable number,--of these European
pike. That will occupy the German peasant and give an outlet to his
superfluous energies. There will be no leisure-energy to discharge
itself in party strife. Further, we must build Europe up again. It stood
on rotten foundations, and now it has fallen to pieces. We shall erect
it again on a German ba