LAND AND WATER 
August 28, 1915. 
made the Chaacollor in secret session laid the 
bareness of the land before the members. It would 
be folly to accept such rumours as the truth, and 
we have no evidence that the German resolution 
would be unequal to the strain of fighting to the 
last man and the last mark. So many confident 
expectations entertained by ourselves, by our 
Allies, and by our enemies have been wildly wrong 
that to form new expectations on such very 
slender grounds indeed would be a sin against the 
light. I confine myself to saying, therefore, that 
I see no alternative between an impending 
German collapse or an existing German insanity 
to explain the " deliberate unfriendliness " to the 
United States. And it is, perhaps, a good com- 
ment upon this alternative to add that it is far 
more probable that the whole of Germany is mad 
than that it has developed a sudden— and fatal — 
objection to insolvency. 
In the third week of July we published our 
T^ 
ES 
a. 
B 
R 
FT, , , 
siiiTaN^miUfusxiraisioii i i s * -^ o ^ » s ion a urns a ins a 30 
last record of submarine attacks up to the 19th. 
Three sinkings on July 15, 16, and 17 have 
been reported since then, and the diagram shows 
the total losses from the middle of July up to 
August 20. It will be seen that there are 75 
vessels in all sunk in just over a month. Of these 
8 belong to our Allies, 19 to Norway, 7 to Sweden, 
4 to Denmark, 2 to Spain, and 1 to the United 
States of America. There were thus 33 neutral 
ships sunk and 34 British, 8 Allied, and in addi- 
tion to these 59 trawlers were also either tor- 
pedoed and sunk by gunfire or bombs. 
A. H. POLLEN. 
THE MIGHT OF PRUSSIA. 
By L. March Phillipps. 
PROFESSOR ERICH MARCK'S sentence in 
a lecture at Cambridge thirteen years ago— 
" Bismarck is Prussia " — is much more than 
an obvious truism. It is true that, in all his 
characteristics and limitations, in his virile 
strength of purpose and concentration on sternly prac- 
tical ends, as well as in his disregard and contempt of 
cerUiin higher and rarer impulses of humanity, Bismarck 
was a sort of incarnate Prussia; so much so that even 
his physical aspect, endowed as it was with such formid- 
able strength, yet with a strength — as shown in the 
heavy form and features and somewhat leaden glance of 
the eye— more of the physical and material than of the 
ideal and imaginative order, might seem a perfectly 
adequate representation of the genius of that State in 
whose existence his own was merged. But more even 
than that is true. Bismarck stands, more particularly 
and in its purest form, for that inner essence of Prus- 
sianism, that despotic, dominating instinct, which 
differentiates Prussia from all other nations. In the 
crisis of Prussia's history, when the German Empire 
was in process of formation, it was Bismarck's reliance 
on this Prussian quality which made the Prussian 
triumph possible. To study Bismarck's share in the 
making of Germany is to see the guiding thought of 
Prussia — that thought so deeply at variance with 
Western convictions which was to plunge Europe into 
the present war — exhibited in its full strength and curt- 
ness of outline. 
The question at issue was a simple one : Was 
Prussia in the new kingdom to occupy the place of the 
leading dominant State in a confederation of States, in 
which case her own individuality, with its traditions of 
military and autocratic authority, would not only be 
preserved but would tend to impose themselves on the 
rest of the States ; or was Prussia to be absorbed into the 
sum total of the Empire, and thus forfeit, or see diluted 
out of recognition, the ideal of government which had 
been so distinctively her own. Expressed in a sentence, 
the alternative amounted to this : Was Prussia to 
Prussianise Germany, or was Germany to Germanise 
Prussia ? 
Such was the problem, but very much more than the 
future Government of Germany hung on its solution. 
1 russia, although at this time of crisis, the middle years 
ot last century, invaded by an unaccustomed strain of 
hberal ideas, was at heart autocratic. The rest of the 
German States were in the main progressive. Their idea 
ot a united Empire was an Empire arranged on a Con- 
stitutional basis and governed by a central Parliament in 
accordance with the wishes of its citizens. They shared 
to the full in the revolutionary excitement which was at 
that time passing over Europe and already triumphed 
at the prospect of a democratic solution of the problem 
of German unity. Thus the question whether Prussia 
would assert her predominance over or be absorbed by the 
new Empire was really a question which of two oppo- 
site and hostile orders of ideas should be established. If 
Prussia triumphed, the Prussian order of ideas — auto- 
cracy, militarism, and the morality of physical force 
— ^would triumph with it. They would impress them- 
selves on the new Germany ; they would acquire, in con- 
sequence, an enormously increased strength, and they 
would incidentally become a serious menace to the rest 
of Europe, which was organising society on the rival 
basis of liberty and self-government. On the other 
hand, if the States prevailed, the Constitutional order of 
ideas for which they stood would prevail also. Prussia, 
absorbed and gradually digested, would cease to be a 
menace, and the Empire itself would fall into line with 
the general tendencies of a progressive Europe. Only 
in this hour do we begin to realise the far-reaching con- 
sequences of Germany's choice. 
There was a moment when it seemed certain that 
she would throw in her lot with the Western nations. 
The revolutionary movement went through the body of 
little German kingdoms with a crackle as of thorns on a 
fire. Freedom, Constitutional government, the rights of 
the people, and the reform of abuses were everywhere 
the topics of politics. Kings and princes were deposed, 
or abdicated, or themselves headed the reformers. In 
Prussia itself the Revolution was guided by a very 
eloquent, able, and enthusiastic body of leaders, and on 
all sides was apparent that impetus and unmistakable 
moral energy which distinguish a cause well fed by 
ideas. A National Assembly at Frankfort was already 
engaged in organising a German Constitution on liberal 
lines, a Liberal Ministry had been formed at Berlin, and 
the King of Prussia had issued a proclamation in which 
occurred the famous phrase, " Prussia was henceforth 
merged in Germany." 
This was in 1848. The previous year Bismarck had 
been elected to the Prussian Parliament and had joined 
and moved to the head of that party which represented 
the most profound, though least articulate, instinct of 
the Prussian race — the sternly despotic instinct which 
has been the bedrock of the ciiaracter of every representap 
tive Prussian statesman, warrior, or monarch, and haa 
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