onderous and sharply limited, his
will powerful and temperate, his morals pure, his heart full of love.
Because no other man appeared after him strong enough to become the
leader of the nation, the German people lost for centuries their
leadership of the earth. The leadership of the Germans in the realm of
intellect, however, is founded on Luther.

[Footnote 2: "_Cito remitte matri filiolum_!" ("Send the little boy
right home to his mother.")]

* * * * *

FREDERICK THE GREAT

By GUSTAV FREYTAG

TRANSLATED BY E.H. BABBITT, A.B.

Assistant Professor of German, Tufts College

What was it that, after the Thirty Years' War drew the attention of
the politicians of Europe to the little State on the northeastern
frontier of Germany which was struggling upward in spite of the Swedes
and the Poles, the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons? The inheritance of the
Hohenzollern was no richly endowed land in which the farmer dwelt in
comfort on well-tilled acres, to which wealthy merchant princes
brought, in deeply-laden galleons, the silks of Italy and the spices
and ingots of the New World. It was a poor, desolate, sandy country of
burned cities and ruined villages. The fields were untilled, and many
square miles, stripped of men and cattle, were given over to the
caprices of wild nature. When, in 1640, Frederick William succeeded to
the Electorate, he found nothing but contested claims to scattered
territories of some thirty thousand square miles. In all the fortified
places of his home land were lodged insolent conquerors. In an
insecure desert this shrewd and tricky prince established his state,
with a craft and disregard of his neighbors' rights which, even in
that unscrupulous age, aroused criticism, but at the same time, with a
heroism and greatness of mind which more than once showed higher
conceptions of German honor than were held by the Emperor himself or
any other prince of the realm. Nevertheless, when, in 1688, this
adroit statesman died, he left behind him only an unimportant State,
in no way to be reckoned among the powers of Europe. For while his
sovereignty extended over about forty-four thousand square miles,
these contained only one million three hundred thousand inhabitants;
and when Frederick II., a hundred years after his great-grandfather,
succeeded to the crown, he inherited only two million two hundred and
forty thousand subjects, not so many as the single province of