thodoxy and the Jesuitic tendencies and ultramontanism of
the Catholics, must be surmounted, before any common religious movement
can be contemplated. But no German statesman can disregard this aspect
of affairs, nor must he ever forget that the greatness of our nation is
rooted exclusively on Protestantism. Legally and socially all
denominations enjoy equal rights, but the German State must never
renounce the leadership in the domain of free spiritual development. To
do so would mean loss of prestige.

Duties of the greatest importance for the whole advance of human
civilization have thus been transmitted to the German nation, as heir of
a great and glorious past. It is faced with problems of no less
significance in the sphere of its international relations. These
problems are of special importance, since they affect most deeply the
intellectual development, and on their solution depends the position of
Germany in the world.

The German Empire has suffered great losses of territory in the storms
and struggles of the past. The Germany of to-day, considered
geographically, is a mutilated torso of the old dominions of the
Emperors; it comprises only a fraction of the German peoples. A large
number of German fellow-countrymen have been incorporated into other
States, or live in political independence, like the Dutch, who have
developed into a separate nationality, but in language and national
customs cannot deny their German ancestry. Germany has been robbed of
her natural boundaries; even the source and mouth of the most
characteristically German stream, the much lauded German Rhine, lie
outside the German territory. On the eastern frontier, too, where the
strength of the modern German Empire grew up in centuries of war against
the Slavs, the possessions of Germany are menaced. The Slavonic waves
are ever dashing more furiously against the coast of that Germanism,
which seems to have lost its old victorious strength.

Signs of political weakness are visible here, while for centuries the
overflow of the strength of the German nation has poured into foreign
countries, and been lost to our fatherland and to our nationality; it is
absorbed by foreign nations and steeped with foreign sentiments. Even
to-day the German Empire possesses no colonial territories where its
increasing population may find remunerative work and a German way of
living.

This is obviously not a condition which can satisfy a powerful nation,
or corr