In a large measure, then, the German Government has failed in its efforts to cure the industrial classes of their socialistic ideas.  But its determination to attach them to the new German Empire, and to make that Empire the leading industrial State of the Continent, has had a complete triumph.  So far as education, technical training, research, and enlightened laws can make a nation great, Germany is surely on the high road to national and industrial supremacy.

It is a strange contrast that meets our eyes if we look back to the years before the advent of King William and Bismarck to power.  In the dark days of the previous reign Germany was weak, divided, and helpless.  In regard to political life and industry she was still almost in swaddling-clothes; and her struggles to escape from the irksome restraints of the old Confederation seemed likely to be as futile as they had been since the year 1815.  But the advent of the King and his sturdy helper to power speedily changed the situation.  The political problems were grappled with one by one, and were trenchantly solved.  Union was won by Bismarck’s diplomacy and Prussia’s sword; and when the longed-for goal was reached in seven momentous years, the same qualities were brought to bear on the difficult task of consolidating that union.  Those qualities were the courage and honesty of purpose that the House of Hohenzollern has always displayed since the days of the Great Elector; added to these were rarer gifts, namely, the width of view, the eagle foresight, the strength of will, the skill in the choice of means, that made up the imposing personality of Bismarck.  It was with an eye to him, and to the astonishing triumphs wrought by his diplomacy over France, that a diplomatist thus summed up the results of the year 1870:  “Europe has lost a mistress, but she has got a master.”

After the lapse of a generation that has been weighted with the cuirass of Militarism, we are able to appreciate the force of that remark.  Equally true is it that the formation of the German Empire has not added to the culture and the inner happiness of the German people.  The days of quiet culture and happiness are gone; and in their place has come a straining after ambitious aims which is a heavy drag even on the vitality of the Teutonic race.  Still, whether for good or for evil, the unification of Germany must stand out as the greatest event in the history of the Nineteenth Century.

NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The statement on page 135 that service in the German army is compulsory for seven years, three in the field army and four in the reserve, applies to the cavalry and artillery only.  In the infantry the time of service is two years with the colours and five years in the reserve.

CHAPTER VII

THE EASTERN QUESTION