A day came when Germany had to choose between a rigid and ready-made system of unification, mechanically superposed from without, and the unity which comes from within by a natural effort of life.  At the same time the choice was offered her between an administrative mechanism, into which she would merely have to fit herself—­a complete order, doubtless, but poverty-stricken, like everything else that is artificial—­and that richer and more flexible order which the wills of men, when freely associated, evolve of themselves.  How would she choose?

There was a man on the spot in whom the methods of Prussia were incarnate—­a genius, I admit, but an evil genius; for he was devoid of scruple, devoid of faith, devoid of pity, and devoid of soul.  He had just removed the only obstacle which could spoil his plan; he had got rid of Austria.  He said to himself:  “We are going to make Germany take over, along with Prussian centralization and discipline, all our ambitions and all our appetites.  If she hesitates, if the confederate peoples do not arrive of their own accord at this common resolution, I know how to compel them; I will cause a breath of hatred to pass over them, all alike.  I will launch them against a common enemy, an enemy we have hood-winked and waylaid, and whom we shall try to catch unarmed.  Then when the hour of triumph shall sound, I will rise up; from Germany, in her intoxication, I will snatch a covenant, which, like that of Faust with Mephistopheles, she has signed with her blood, and by which she also, like Faust, has traded her soul away for the good things of earth.”

He did as he had said.  The covenant was made.  But, to ensure that it would never be broken, Germany must be made to feel, for ever and ever, the necessity of the armour in which she was imprisoned.  Bismarck took his measures accordingly.  Among the confidences which fell from his lips and were gathered up by his intimates is this revealing word:  “We took nothing from Austria after Sadowa because we wanted to be able one day to be reconciled with her.”  So, then, in taking Alsace and a part of Lorraine, his idea was that no reconciliation with the French would be possible.  He intended that the German people should believe itself in permanent danger of war, that the new Empire should remain armed to the teeth, and that Germany, instead of dissolving Prussian militarism into her own life, should reinforce it by militarizing herself.

She reinforced it; and day by day the machine grew in complexity and power.  But in the process it yielded automatically a result very different from that which its constructors had foreseen.  It is the story of the witch who, by a magic incantation, had won the consent of her broomstick to go to the river and fill her buckets; having no formula ready to check the work, she watched her cave fill with water until she was drowned.