SHORTCOMINGS OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 29 



(subsequently Emperor William) fly the country for personal 

 safety.^ He would be better prepared. Newly acceded 

 to the Throne as Prince Regent, already as early as in 1856, 

 he ordered all that, it seems, he was constitutionally 

 empowered to enforce, namely, a considerable increase of 

 the staff of army officers, beyond the number budgeted 

 for. The sham mobilisation of 1859, which made the 

 Austrians indignant, ^ afforded a further opportunity for 

 inflating the corps of officers. Officers of the reserve were 

 pressed into the standing army in great numbers. Then 

 came the Army Bill of 1861, which exactly doubled the old 

 military establishment, and which was carried out in open 

 defiance of the opposing Chamber. Vi et armis Bismarck 

 carried his measure, and at once set the new instrument 

 for fighting to work in Slesvick-Holstein in 1864. Queen 

 Victoria prevented our interfering, and the result was, 

 among other things, the digging of the great canal connect- 

 ing the Baltic with the North Sea, the benefit of which 

 we are now in a position to appreciate. It has greatly 

 added to Germany's naval power. Notwithstanding the 

 vigorous protest raised by constitutionalists, standing up 

 for Federation rights against Prussia and Austria overriding 

 the decision of the " Bund," the ousting of Denmark from 

 the'^German provinces and the acquisition of new territory 

 — and not least the successful flouting of England — made 

 the war retrospectively popular in Prussia and dug the grave 

 of the old Liberalism of Waldeck and Schulze, who aimed 

 at a Constitution like the British. Present-day German 

 Liberalism, though our newspaper correspondents will persist 

 in dubbing it " Radical " — which it decidedly is not — is 



^ It had been proposed that he should take refuge in Stettin. 

 However, the Stettiners promptly started a doggerel rhyme, set to 

 a popular polka tune, which said : 



" Komme doch, komme doch, Priiiz von Preussen, 

 Komme doch, komme doch nach Stettin ! 

 Woll'n wir dich mit Steinen schmeissen, 

 Wie die Leute in Berlin." 



2 A few years after I heard Austrians singing freely the doggerel 

 rhyme : 



" Preussen hat uns zug^sagt 

 Uns zu helfen in der Schlacht — 

 Mausefalle ! Mausefalle ! " 



