will be on the side of our antagonist
whom we have attacked. "Holy Russia" will be filled with indignation at
the attack. France will glisten with weapons to the Pyrenees. The same
thing will happen everywhere. A war into which we are not borne by the
will of the people--such a war will of course be carried on, if in the
last instance the established authorities consider and have declared it
to be necessary. It will be carried on with energy and perhaps
victoriously, as soon as the men come under fire and have seen blood;
but there will not be back of it, from the start, the same dash and heat
as in a war in which we are attacked....

I do not believe--to sum up--that any disturbance of the peace is in
immediate prospect; and I ask you to deal with the law that lies before
you, independently of any such idea or apprehension, simply as a means
for making the great force which God has lodged in the German nation
completely available in the event of our needing it. If we do not need
it, we shall not call for it. We seek to avoid the chance of our needing
it. This effort on our part is still, in some degree, impeded by
threatening newspaper articles from foreign countries; and I wish to
address to foreign countries especially the admonition to discontinue
these threats. They lead to nothing. The threat which we receive, not
from the foreign government, but in the press, is really a piece of
incredible stupidity, if you think what it means--that by a certain
combination of words, by a certain threatening shape given to printer's
ink, a great and proud power like the German Empire is assumed to be
capable of intimidation. This should be discontinued; and then it would
be made easier for us to assume a more conciliatory and obliging
attitude toward our two neighbors. Every country is responsible in the
long run, somehow and at some time, for the windows broken by its press;
the bill is presented some day or other, in the ill-humor of the other
country. We can easily be influenced by love and good-will,--too easily
perhaps,--but most assuredly not by threats. We Germans fear God, but
nothing else in the world; and it is the fear of God that makes us love
and cherish peace. But whoever, despite this, breaks it, will find that
the warlike patriotism that in 1813, when Prussia was weak, small, and
exhausted by plunder, brought her whole population under her banners,
has to-day become the common heritage of the whole German nation;