Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/257

 if only one could find the second means, namely, that of creating the equilibrium and transforming it from an empty thought into a thing of reality.

200. But were these assumptions in fact to be made universally and without any exception? Had not the mighty German nation, in the middle of Europe, kept its hands off this prey, and was it not untainted by any craving for it, and almost incapable of making a claim to it? If only the German nation had remained united, with a common will and a common strength! Then, though the other Europeans might have wanted to murder each other on every sea and shore, and on every island too, in the middle of Europe the firm wall of the Germans would have prevented them from reaching each other. Here peace would have remained, and the Germans would have maintained themselves, and with themselves also a part of the other European peoples, in quiet and prosperity.

201. That things should remain thus did not suit the selfishness of foreign countries, whose calculations did not look more than one moment ahead. They found German bravery useful in waging their wars and German hands useful to snatch the booty from their rivals. A means had to be found to attain this end, and foreign cunning won an easy victory over German ingenuousness and lack of suspicion. It was foreign countries which first made use of the division of mind produced by religious disputes in Germany—Germany, which presented on a small scale the features of Christian Europe as a whole—foreign countries, I say, made use of these disputes to break up the close inner unity of Germany into separate and disconnected parts. Foreign countries had already destroyed their own unity naturally, by splitting into parts over a common prey; and now they artificially