September ll, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER 
Is essentially personal. It connotes the rise of Prussia 
and the military might and ascendancy of Prussia, and 
these are issues which, of course, intimately concern 
the Prussian people. But they do not, save as they 
seem to threaten, affect others. They are not a common 
ideal. The good that Prussia preaches is a Prussian 
good, not a universal good in which all can share. Its 
nature is concrete and individual, not abstract and 
universal. The means it has used have been as 
mundane as the ends it has sought, and by degrees its 
whole imperial design has become impregnated, in all 
its motives and expedients and ideas, with that essentially 
materialistic flavour which we have learnt to associate 
with Prussian achievements. 
Prussia's Limitations. 
And this being so — the designs and ideas of Prussia 
being thus personal to herself and of service to herself 
only — it has followed that nothing she has done iias 
for a moment quickened the imagination and thrilled 
the soul of humanity. The German Empire under 
Prussia's guidance has made wonderful progress and 
achieved extraordinary results, but in the wliole process 
of the construction of German power and pride there 
has been no episode and no word spoken or written which 
has had a wider than German significance. Not a 
thought, not an act in the whole work, has for an in- 
.stant touched the heart of the world as those thoughts 
and acts touch it which illumine the high principles 
common to the human species. 
From that level of thought and action let the reader 
revert for a moment to the noblest of Meredith's 
heroines, in whom, indeed, the very spirit of renovated 
Italy is incarnate, and to her followers, the leaders of the 
national movement in whom were instinct the idealism 
and poetry which, whatever some of us may think, are 
the inspiration of all that is finally enduring in the lives 
of nations. The thoughts and actions of Italian unifica- 
tion touched in this way the genius of a foreigner 
precisely because they were a matter of universal con- 
cern. And they were of universal concern because they 
vindicated the beauty and the value of a principle 
vitally important to the human race. From the first the 
spiritual forces in the Italian enterprise are the dominant 
forces and lift the whole drama to a level where material 
considerations scarcely count. Mad we to choose the 
moment in the Italian adventure most full of assurance 
for the future we should choose no moment of 
triumph but the " splendid dream " of " '48." There 
are few episodes in all history so high in sentiment, so 
pure in their spiritual quality. It failed? Well, it is 
the fashion to say so. It broke itself upon Austria's 
discipline and the resources of organised warfare. But 
it put the final result past doubt. It revealed the spirit 
in which Italy acted. Novara made Magenta certain. 
Love of Liberty. 
Therefore it is that, among all who love liberty, 
Italy herself is the more loved because of her services 
in that cause. In England the love of Italy is native. 
The thoughts of all of us are apt to recur, with an affec- 
tion sometimes amounting to longing, to her scenery, 
her mountains and cypresses and terraced vineyards. 
Often we picture the white curves of Alpine slopes, seen 
from the plains or the blue level of lakes, brooding, like 
the white breasts of swans, as Meredith said, over the 
olives and grapes of Lombardy. But our affection is 
not due entirely to her scenery, nor even to the art of her 
cities. Beneath these outward attractions there exists 
the consciousness of an inward affinity and sympathy. 
Italy has fought for freedom, has ranged herself with 
the Powers wliich are the sworn champions of liberty ; 
and over and above that has enriched the cause of liberty 
with a gift which is her own. 
For this she has done. Each of the three Western 
nations has contributed something of its own to the 
common ideal. France has made liberty rational, 
Jingland has made it practicable, Italy has made it 
beautiful. I shall r',ot be held to be depreciating our own 
achievements if I .say that Italy's efforts on behalf of 
liberty suggest to us ideas which our own experience 
fails to suggest. The spirit I have spoken of as animar- 
ing the Italian Revolution — the spirit of aspiration and 
pure idealism — is not native to England. The genius of 
our race, essentially practical, usually restricts itself to 
so much of an ideal as can be turned into immediate 
action. Moreover, in England all parties and all classes 
have more or less co-operated in carrying on the same 
constitutional work, and in consequence our pro- 
gress has been for the most part of a deliberate and 
methodical kind, involving not so much the exercise of 
heroic and imaginative gifts as a mild practical per- 
severance in the affairs of daily life. But Italian 
aspiration has been faced with apparently insurmount- 
able obstacles, both as regards the armed forces of the 
foreign invader and the resistance of tyranny and 
despotism entrenched within her own borders. Only by 
an ebullition of purely spiritual sentiment and self-sacri- 
fice could she hope to overcome such material impedi- 
ments. She made, however, the effort. She rose to the 
occasion, and by so doing she has revealed the beauty 
and poetry and romance of liberty in a way that is a 
revelation to all of us. The history of Italian unification 
not only attracts, as I have said, the world's attention 
because it deals with a principle of worldwide signi- 
ficance, but it attracts also the world's admiration and 
gratitude because it invests that principle with an added 
beauty. 
Fifty Years Ago. 
The events we have been considering happened fifty 
years ago. The rise into organic form and unity of the 
German and Italian kingdoms belongs already to the 
records of past history. Nevertheless those causes are 
to-day living in their effects. The middle years of last 
century were an epoch of frantic debate in which nation 
by nation argued out and settled for itself the question 
whether it would be for liberty or against it. In no case 
was the decision then arrived at reversed. Germany, its 
aspirations after freedom thwarted and stifled by the 
iron Prussian will, accepted Prussian dominion, and 
became the willing instrument of the Prussian military 
and autocratic tradition. That was decisive for Ger- 
many. Her choice placed her definitely on the side of 
reaction and the nations that were pledged to reaction, 
just as Italy's choice placed her definitely on the side of 
the group of nations pledged to freedom. 
Henceforth, in spite of superficial quarrels and 
alliances, the place of the two nations in Europe's great 
quarrel was assured. Germany might fall out with 
Austria on the question which of them was to lead the 
reactionary forces. Italy might be drawn by diplomatic 
manoeuvres into a quasi-alliance with the Germanic 
Powers. Nevertheless, as the day drew on which was to 
decide the issue between liberty and physical might, all 
lesser engagements yielded and gave way. Tliat issue 
was paramount. It penetrated to the core of life and 
vitally affected the spiritual and intellectual outlook of 
Europe. No other consideration or motive mattered in 
comparison with this, and accordingly when the moment 
of final decision came it was in obedience to their convic- 
tion on this issue that the nations ranged themselves. 
1 he reader remembers the gathering torrent of public 
enthusiasm in Italy last spring which swept away like 
straws political intrigues and triple alliances and all other 
hindrances to Italy's fighting. That was a great national 
ratification of a decision arrived at fifty years ago. 
Messrs. William Clowes and Sons have just) published 
" Germany at a Glance," a little interleaved volume designed 
as an aid to German map-reading. Courses of the rivers, 
details of the mountain ranges, &c., are given with the names 
of towns and important places in the localities mentioned, 
and one value of the book is that it enables one to locate 
towns not mentioned on certain maps, while the interleaving 
admits of the insertion of s.-.aller towns and villages from 
detailed plans. The book is published at 1.^. 6d., and wiU 
be found very useful in tlie study of German maps. 
13 
