th some support from Italy. It is in this double menace by sea and on
the mainland of Europe that the grave danger to our political position
lies, since all freedom of action is taken from us and all expansion
barred.

Since the struggle is, as appears on a thorough investigation of the
international question, necessary and inevitable, we must fight it out,
cost what it may. Indeed, we are carrying it on at the present moment,
though not with drawn swords, and only by peaceful means so far. On the
one hand it is being waged by the competition in trade, industries and
warlike preparations; on the other hand, by diplomatic methods with
which the rival States are fighting each other in every region where
their interests clash.

With these methods it has been possible to maintain peace hitherto, but
not without considerable loss of power and prestige. This apparently
peaceful state of things must not deceive us; we are facing a hidden,
but none the less formidable, crisis--perhaps the most momentous crisis
in the history of the German nation.

We have fought in the last great wars for our national union and our
position among the Powers of _Europe_; we now must decide whether we
wish to develop into and maintain a _World Empire_, and procure for
German spirit and German ideas that fit recognition which has been
hitherto withheld from them.

Have we the energy to aspire to that great goal? Are we prepared to make
the sacrifices which such an effort will doubtless cost us? or are we
willing to recoil before the hostile forces, and sink step by step lower
in our economic, political, and national importance? That is what is
involved in our decision.

"To be, or not to be," is the question which is put to us to-day,
disguised, indeed, by the apparent equilibrium of the opposing interests
and forces, by the deceitful shifts of diplomacy, and the official
peace-aspirations of all the States; but by the logic of history
inexorably demanding an answer, if we look with clear gaze beyond the
narrow horizon of the day and the mere surface of things into the region
of realities.

There is no standing still in the world's history. All is growth and
development. It is obviously impossible to keep things in the _status
quo_, as diplomacy has so often attempted. No true statesman will ever
seriously count on such a possibility; he will only make the outward and
temporary maintenance of existing conditions a duty when he wishes to
ga