1914] on The Foundations of Diplomacy 5 



was with him, and, strengthened by that knowledge, he applied him- 

 self to the realization of the national ideal. His diplomacy, though 

 inferior in texture and quality to the finer web woven by Cavour, was 

 inspired throughout by a burning patriotic purpose nourished by 

 knowledge of the obstacles to be overcome, and by the determination 

 to overcome them. The really heroic epoch of the process of German 

 unification was not that of the war against Austria in 1866, nor even 

 that of the victories over France in 1870-71. It lay rather in the 

 Ko?iffiMperiode between 1868 and 1866, when Bismarck, greatly 

 daring, broke through the restrictions which the pedantic and pro- 

 fessorial spirit of the Liberals in the Prussian Diet sought to impose 

 upon him, and prepared, in the light of his knowledge, the military 

 and diplomatic wherewithal for the overthrow of Austria and France. 



Equally significant with Bismarck's action in thus taking immense 

 risks in order to prepare the realization of an ideal which he knew to 

 lie deep in the hearts of his fellow-countrymen, however far it may 

 have been from the thoughts of the men who were supposed to repre- 

 sent the people, was his conduct after 1870 in deliberately striving 

 to promote national education in matters of foreign politics by means 

 of agents best fitted for the work. 



He himself spoke in Parliament and out of Parliament with a 

 fulness and efficacy rarely surpassed by statesmen in other countries. 

 But he knew that his words alone could not achieve the task in hand. 

 Through the famous historian. Professor von Treitschke and others, 

 he sought to reach, and reached, the minds of the younger generations, 

 to inflame them witli the ideal of German greatness, to teach them 

 pride in the Fatherland, and to urge upon them the need for patriotic 

 sacrifice, not only at supreme moments, but on every day and at every 

 hour of their lives. I myself had the privilege in the early nineties 

 of sitting at the feet of TreitscHke and hearing his public lectures to 

 the students of Berlin University. The fire and force of his elo- 

 quence, the intensity of his conviction, his magnetic power need to 

 have been experienced in order to be fully understood. By my side 

 sat a typical young German whose philosophic tendencies and wide 

 though ill-digested reading had led him to adopt a conception of in- 

 dividual and national life tino^ed with doctrinairism and vao-ue cosmo- 

 pohtan aspiration, and who was at first incUned to resent the 

 " narrowness " of Treitschke's intense national idealism. A few 

 years later I met my young friend again and found him transformed. 

 When I alluded to Treitschke's lectures, he said with glowing en- 

 thusiasm, " De7i Mann verehre ich ; der hat mir mein Vaterland 

 iviedergegeben " (" That man I revere ; he gave me back my Father- 

 land "). It was as though I had witnessed the passing of a German 

 mind of the old type and the birth of the modern Gerinan spirit-^ 

 the pouring of a new, almost religious, fervour into minds that had 

 previously lacked inspiration and had floated on through life upon a 

 broad, sluggish stream of sentimental inefficacy. 



