whether we will have war and of the success with which shall have it (it was a representative of the Centre who upbraided me with it in the Reichstag) depends to-day only on Russia. Russia alone has the decision in her hands."

Perhaps I will return to this question later. In the meantime, I will continue the pictures of these forty years and recall that in 1876 a war-cloud gathered in the South; that in 1877, the Balkan War was only prevented by the Berlin Congress from putting the whole of Europe in a blaze, and that quite suddenly after the Congress a new vision of danger was disclosed to us in the East because Russia was offended by our action at the conference. Perhaps, later on, I will recur to this also if my strength will permit.

Then followed a certain reaction in the intimate relations of the three emperors which allowed us to look for some time into the future with more assurance; yet on the first signs of uncertainty in their relations, or because of the lapsing of the agreements they had made with each other, our public opinion showed the same nervous and, I think, exaggerated excitement with which we had to contend last year-which, at the present time, I hold to be specially uncalled for. But because I think this nervousness uncalled for now, I am far from concluding that we do not need an increase of our war-footing. On the contrary! Therefore, I have unrolled before you this tableau of forty yearsperhaps not to your amusement! If not, I beg your pardon, but had I omitted a year from that which you yourselves had experienced with shuddering, the impression might have been lost that the state of anxiety before wars, before continually extending complications, the entanglements of which no one can anticipate, that this condition is permanent with us; that we must reckon upon it as a permanency; and that independently of the circumstances of the moment, with the self-confidence of a great nation which is strong enough under any circumstances to take its fate into its own hands against any coalition; with the confidence in itself and in God which its own power and the righteousness of its cause, a righteousness which the care of the government will always keep with Germany-that we shall be able to foresee every possibility and, doing so, to look forward to peace.

The long and the short of it is that in these days we must be as strong as we can; and if we will, we can be stronger than

any other country of equal resources in the world. I will return to that. And it would be a crime not to use our resources. If we do not need an army prepared for war, we do not need to call for it. It depends merely on the not very important question of the cost-and it is not very important, though I mention it incidentally. I have no mind to go into figures, financial or military, but France during the last few years has spent in improving her forces three thousand millions, while we have spent hardly fifteen hundred millions including that we are now asking for. But I leave the ministers of war and of finance to deal with that. When I say that we must strive continually to be ready for all emergencies, I advance the proposition that, on account of our geographical position, we must make greater efforts than other powers would be obliged to make in view of the same ends. We lie in the middle of Europe. We have at least three fronts on which we can be attacked. France has only an eastern boundary; Russia only its western, exposed to assault. We are, moreover, more exposed than any other people to the danger of hostile coalition because of our geographical position, and because, perhaps, of the feeble power of cohesion which, until now, the German people has exhibited when compared with others. At any rate, God has placed us in a position where our neighbors will prevent us from falling into a condition of sloth - of wallowing in the mire of mere existence. On one side of us he has set the French, a most warlike and restless nation; and he has allowed to become exaggerated in the Russians fighting tendencies which had not become apparent in them during the earlier part of the century. So we are spurred forward on both sides to endeavors which perhaps we would not make otherwise. The pikes in the European carp-pond will not allow us to become carp, because they make us feel their stings in both our sides. They force us to an effort which, perhaps, we would not make otherwise, and they force us also to a cohesion among ourselves as Germans which is opposed to our innermost nature; otherwise we would prefer to struggle with each other. But when we are enfiladed by the press of France and Russia, it compels us to stand together, and through such compression it will so increase our fitness for cohesion that we may finally come into the same condition of indivisibility which is natural to other people which thus far we have lacked. We must respond to this dispensation of Providence, however, by making ourselves so

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strong that the pike can do nothing more than encourage us to exert ourselves. We had, years ago, in the times of the Holy Alliance (I recall an old American song which I learned from my dead friend, Motley:

In good old colonial times

When we lived under a king!)

We had then patriarchal times and with them a multitude of balustrades on which we could support ourselves, and a multitude of dykes to protect us from the wild European floods. That was the German confederation, and the true beginning, and continuance, and conclusion of the German confederation was the Holy Alliance, for whose service it was made. We depended on Russia and Austria, and, above everything, we relied on our own modesty, which did not allow us to speak before the rest of the company had spoken. We have lost all that, and we must help ourselves. The Holy Alliance was shipwrecked in the Crimean War-through no fault of ours! The German confederation has been destroyed by us because our existence under it was neither tolerable for us nor for the German people. Both have ceased to exist. After the dissolution of the German confederation, after the war of 1866, we would have been obliged to reckon on isolation for Prussia or North Germany, had we been obliged to stop at reckoning with the fact that, on no side would they forgive us the new and great successes which we had obtained. Never do other powers look with pleasure on the triumphs of a neighbor.

Our connection with Russia was not disturbed, however, by the events of 1866. In 1866 the memory of the politics of Count von Buol and of Austrian politics during the Crimean War was too fresh in Russia to allow them to think of supporting the Austrian against the Prussian monarchy, or of renewing the campaign which Czar Nicholas had conducted for Austria in 1849. For us, therefore, there remained a natural inclination towards Russia, which, foreseen in the last century, had in this its recognized origin in the politics of Czar Alexander I. To him Prussia owes thanks indeed. In 1813 he could easily have turned on the Polish frontiers and concluded peace. Later he could have brought about the fall of Prussia. We have then, as a fact, to thank, for the restoration of the old footing, the good will of Czar Alexander I.; or, if you are inclined to be skeptical, say to the need felt in Russian politics for Prussia. This feeling of

gratitude has controlled the administration of Frederick William the Third.

The balance which Russia had on its account with Prussia was used up through the friendship, I may say through the serviceability of Prussia during the entire reign of Czar Nicholas and, I may add, settled at Olmutz. At Olmutz, Czar Nicholas did not take the part of Prussia, did not shield us from adverse experience, did not guard us against humiliation; for, on the whole, he leaned towards Austria more than towards Prussia. The idea that during his administration we owed thanks to Russia results from a historical legend. But while Czar Nicholas lived, we, on our side, did not violate the tradition with Russia. During the Crimean War, as I have already told you, we stood by Russia in spite of threats and of some hazard. His Majesty, the late King, had no desire to play a decided part in the war with a strong army, as I think he could easily have done. We had concluded treaties by which we were bound to put a hundred thousand men in the field by a set time. I advised his Majesty that we should put not a hundred thousand but two hundred thousand in the field and to put them there à cheval so that we could use them right and left; so that his Majesty would have been the final arbiter of the fortunes of the Crimean War. But his late Majesty was not inclined to warlike undertakings, and the people ought to be grateful to him for it. I was younger and less experienced then than I am now. We bore no malice for Olmutz, however, during

the Crimean War. We came out of the Crimean War as a friend of Russia, and while I was ambassador to Russia I enjoyed the fruit of this friendship in a very favorable reception at court and in Russian society. Our attitude towards Austria in the Italian War was not to the taste of the Russian cabinet, but it had no unfavorable consequences. Our Austrian War of 1866 was looked upon with a certain satisfaction. No one in Russia then grudged Austria what she got. In the year 1870 we had, in taking our stand and making our defense, the satisfaction of coincidently rendering a service to our Russian friends in the Black Sea. The opening of the Black Sea by the contracting powers would never have been probable if the Germans had not been victorious in the neighborhood of Paris. Had we been defeated, for example, I think the conclusion of the London agreement would not have been so easily in Russia's favor. So the war of 1870 left no ill humor between us and Russia.

But we will And that is a carbine which

The bill will bring us an increase of troops capable of bearing arms- a possible increase, which if we do not need it, we need not call out, but can leave the men at home. have it ready for service if we have arms for it. matter of primary importance. I remember the was furnished by England to our Landwehr in 1813, and with which I had some practice as a huntsman-that was no weapon for a soldier! We can get arms suddenly for an emergency, but if we have them ready for it, then this bill will count for a strengthening of our peace forces and a reinforcement of the peace league as great as if a fourth great power had joined the alliance with an army of seven hundred thousand men—the greatest yet put in the field.

I think, too, that this powerful reinforcement of the army will have a quieting effect on our own people, and will in some measure relieve the nervousness of our exchanges, of our press, and of our public opinion. I hope they all will be comforted if they make it clear to themselves that after this reinforcement and from the moment of the signature and publication of the bill, the soldiers are there! But arms are necessary, and we must provide better ones if we wish to have an army of triarians—of the best manhood that we have among our people; of fathers of family over thirty years old! And we must give them the best arms that can be had! We must not send them into battle with what we have not thought good enough for our young troops of the line. But our steadfast men, our fathers of family, our Samsons, such as we remember seeing hold the bridge at Versailles, must have the best arms on their shoulders, and the best clothing to protect them against the weather, which can be had from anywhere. We must not be niggardly in this. And I hope it will reassure our countrymen if they think now it will be the case as I do not believe-that we are likely to be attacked on both sides at once. There is a possibility of it, for, as I have explained to you in the history of the Forty Years' War, all manner of coalitions may occur. But if it should occur we could hold the defensive on our borders with a million good soldiers. At the same time, we could hold in reserve a half million or more, almost a million, indeed; and send them forward as they were needed. Some one has said to me: "The only result of that will be that the others will increase their forces also." But they cannot. They have long ago reached the maximum. We