THE GERMAN NATION 



307 



Kaiser fine food and drink when he 

 passed their way. But the Kaiser soon 

 put his foot down on such a procedure. 

 He issued an order saying that he would 

 thereafter be offended by sumptuous en- 

 tainment and ;' deHghted with Spartan 

 fare. The German officers' messes there- 

 upon went back to ' the times of Von 

 Moltke. 



Solemn warnings for years have been 

 issued against the abandonment by the 

 people of "the discipline of denial," ad- 

 monishing that Germany's greatness, a 

 monument of her self-denial, was being 

 undermined by self-indulgence. In the 

 Reichstag, a Socialist member, hearing a 

 speech of Von Bulow's, asking all Ger-. 

 many to retrench, inquired if that meant 

 everybody. An affirmative reply resulted 

 in cutting off $5,000,000 a year, from the 

 additional funds voted the Kaiser for 

 maintaining his 54 royal palaces, his 

 ocean-going yacht, his elaborate special 

 trains, and his great collection of high- 

 powered automobiles. " 



MANY AND BiTTEiR WARS 



The history of the 26 States vv^hich 

 constitute the present German Empire is 

 one long record of bitter wars. Some- 

 times they combined against Russia, Po- 

 land, France, and their other neighbors, 

 but more often they were fighting each 

 other, even more fiercely than England 

 and Scotland fought. As one reads the 

 history of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and 

 the smaller States, one wonders how they 

 raised enough to eat, because armies were 

 always laying waste the fields. Only a 

 people of extraordinary endurance could 

 have survived the almost ceaseless wars 

 that from the days of Charlemagne and 

 until very recent times have devastated 

 what is now Germany. 



The Thirty Years' War, in the first 

 half of the seventeenth century, which 

 began as a religious struggle and settled 

 once for all in Europe the principle that 

 men should not be persecuted for their 

 religious faith, reduced the population 

 from 20,000,000 to 6,000,000. "Whole 

 towns and villages were laid in ashes 

 and vast districts turned into deserts. 

 Churches and schools were closed by 

 hundreds, and to such straits were the 



people often reduced that cannibalism is 

 said to have been not uncommon. In- 

 dustry and trade were so completely 

 paralyzed that in 1635 the Hanseatic 

 League was virtually broken up, because 

 the members, once so wealthy, could not 

 meet the necessary expenditure. The 

 population was not only impoverished 

 and reduced in numbers, but broken in 

 spirit. It lost confidence in itself, and 

 for a time effected in politics, literature, 

 art, and science little that is worthy of 

 serious study." Yet such was the re- 

 cuperative power of the German race 

 that in a few decades they were as nu- 

 merous and wealthy as before. 



During the eighteenth century Prussia 

 became an aspirant for the leadership of 

 the German peoples, and through the 

 military genius of Frederick the Great, 

 helped by English gold, humbled Austria 

 and took her place as the most powerful 

 member of the German States. These 

 wars (the Austrian succession, i74i-'48, 

 arid the Seven Years' War, 1756- 1763) 

 cost the lives of 1,000,000 men and wo- 

 men and impoverished all Europe. In 

 Prussia alone 14,500 houses were burned. 



When the Napoleonic wars broke out 

 the Little Corporal early reduced Ger- 

 many to a loose-jointed Confederation of 

 the Rhine; but his march to Moscow 

 called again into vigorous life the Ger- 

 man spirit that seemingly had been 

 crushed, and the German aid given the 

 Allies is history. After Napoleon had 

 been driven to Elba, the Congress of 

 Vienna met and is reputed to have treated 

 the world as so much real estate to be 

 parceled out by the executors of Na- 

 poleon's Empire, regardless of the wishes 

 of the populations, which figured in the 

 protocols merely as numbers to be bar- 

 tered and balanced one against the other. 

 In the process of dividing the spoils the 

 allies were about to go to war with one 

 another, and probably would have done 

 so had not Napoleon's return from Elba 

 recalled them to their senses. 



Under the Treaty of Vienna the Ger- 

 man States were reconstructed into a 

 confederation, in which Austria received 

 the presidency. There was a diet to set- 

 tle all matters of common interest, but 

 each State was free to effect alliances as 



