on. More land, more men, more food, more soldiers. The better and stronger the army, the more land could be captured, and, as the physical strength of the state increased, its chances of growing still larger would be correspondingly better. It must fight for existence. It could only survive if it conquered its neighbors.

The land to be conquered was necessarily that occupied by friends and rivals of Brandenburg; waste land there was none. To all of the surrounding states the Elector was bound by treaties, agreements, promises, avowed or implicit. The country could grow only at the expense of others, only in defiance of the rights of others, and, it might be, only by breaking explicit treaties and promises. To accept such a principle as the binding character of treaties was to accept the limitations of Prussia's position and to renounce all plans for growth and security. This to Prussian kings has been unthinkable. The safety of the state was greater than the obligation of any written agreement. It was unfortunate but unavoidable.

The other principle which the Great Elector laid down as the result of the experience of his predecessors was the necessity of offensive campaigns by his army. He must never wait to be attacked. A successful defense in the absence of geographical frontiers could only be conducted on foreign territory. To allow the enemy to begin the war was to be defeated before the war began. Even, therefore, in a purely defensive war, his armies must take the offensive if possible.

The Great Elector had the ability and the opportunity to apply these principles. He organized his estates, built up a competent army, systematized taxation and administration, and increased more than considerably the area of his state. His successors continued to tread the path he had mapped out for

them. In 1701, the title King of Prussia was assumed. They had been kings in Prussia for a century and more but only Electors in Germany and they wished now to have the title of King in Germany. Brandenburg is not Prussia, for Prussia proper is located far to the east along the Baltic, nor are the people of present Prussia the Prussians in a historical sense.

Then came to the throne in 1740 Frederick the Great, who reigned until the year before the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. The Great Elector had left Prussia in three pieces one around Berlin, Prussia itself, some distance to the east with Poland in between, and far off in the west along the Rhine, two or three tiny bits of territory. The object of his successors was simple in the extreme: to tie those pieces together by getting the land in between. Frederick the Great tied Prussia and Brandenburg together and added to the south the very large and rich district of Silesia. The Napoleonic wars worked havoc with Prussia but in the end at the Treaty of Vienna Prussia was strengthened and given territory on the south from Saxony and in the west from Holland and smaller German states.

After a period of slow and quiet growth and apparent humility, there came to power Bismarck, one of the ablest of all German statesmen. He undertook to unite all Germany around Prussia, and if necessary was ready to conquer Germany in order to compel it to act in concert with Prussia. Scarcely anything in history ever seemed to the people who lived through it more like a tale of the Arabian nights, like the rubbing of some lamp or the turning of some ring, than the growth in a moment of a great state and the creation of the German empire.

When Bismarck came to power, Prussia was reputed the weakest of the European powers, the least able, the least dangerous, the least well organized. Disraeli declared it ripe for partition.

She had been humiliated by Austria repeatedly and it used to be said that it was idle to ask questions about Prussian policy in Berlin; one must go to Paris or Vienna for information. Apparently Prussia was hated and distrusted by the other German states; she lacked access to the Atlantic; her industrial development was rudimentary, and the poverty of the people great.

Within ten years, the situation had been revolutionized. Austria had been excluded from Germany by a rapid and successful campaign, and compelled to recognize the reorganization of Germany by Prussia in Prussian fashion. For a thousand years, Austria had been the most important German state. In 1850 it had seemed as if she might remain the most important for at least a century, and in 1866 she was excluded from Germany by force. At that same time the northern German states, who refused to come to terms with Prussia by agreement, were practically conquered and compelled to join the North German Confederation. Prussia took possession of Kiel, Hamburg, and the mouth of the Elbe, and laid the foundation of future naval power and commercial development. In 1870 war was accepted with what was supposed to be the most powerful and formidable nation in Europe, an overwhelming victory was won, and an enormous money indemnity was extorted. The offensive strategic position in Europe Alsace-Lorraine-was taken from France and annexed to Germany, and the German Empire, uniting all German states under one extremely powerful and autocratic government, was created. In 1861 Prussia was hardly considered a great power. In 1871, the German Empire was clearly the arbiter of the destiny of Europe and likely to remain so, men thought, for half a century. There was the miracle which astounded the world, which thrilled the German people and gave them, for the first time in a century, supreme confidence in their strength and capacity. Then began

the talk of German destiny to rule the world, of German supremacy, of super-man, of the superiority of Kultur over all other ideas of civilization.

Then followed a miracle almost greater. The lamp was rubbed a second time, and lo! the German state, already powerful and feared, became wealthy. Ever since the Thirty Years' War, Germany as a whole had been poor, collectively and individually, and now came wealth. The railroads, the new machinery, now introduced into Germany systematically, compulsory education, all directed and developed by Bismarck, pushed Germany ahead in economic growth at a pace which was literally marvelous. The goods produced doubled and trebled in volume and value, and doubled again. The yield of farms doubled and doubled again. German ships weighed down the ocean. Presently, the German navy became formidable. German commerce, once scarcely known outside of Europe itself, now reached to the very confines of the globe. Had not the despised stone become the head of the corner? Had not the downtrodden become the favored of God? Did not such achievements demonstrate to the naked eye and the dullest brain the latent force in the German people? The extraordinary potency of their political and individual formula? What was left to be done? Was there anything left that could be done worthy of such a people who had achieved within the lifetime of a single generation such a political, diplomatic, economic transformation?

The result consecrated the method. The army had made possible the war with Austria and German unity; it had made possible the war with France and the domination of Europe. The two had fathered the economic development and made possible national wealth. The Empire was an autocratic militaristic government which did in truth cramp and fetter the individual,