Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 127.djvu/824

812 future reserve that is to fill it up to a field army; whilst every German reservist is trained and ready for his place at call. Her territorial army exists solely on paper. Her armament is incomplete. Her supply of stores is utterly inadequate to the exigencies of a great campaign. In short, if forced into the struggle now, she would undoubtedly enter it under far less favourable conditions than those of 1870 as regards her own part: whilst the German forces would not only be strengthened by the prestige of victory, and the advantage of experience on their side, but would be found more complete and fit throughout at every point than was the case five years ago; for to make them so has been the object of unwearied and able administrators, supported by an enthusiastic nation, and supplied with almost unlimited funds. And all this contrast is fully known and carefully studied in the giant bureau on the Thier-Garten, where military science, trained to approach mathematical precision, has concentrated all the material that brain-work can create to make military predominance once gained a constant possession. But when all this is granted, it is none the less an error to assume that there could have been no wish or desire to force France three months since against her will into the unequal contest that should end in her absolute prostration; or to dispute that war would almost certainly have been unscrupulously produced but that Prince Bismarck had but little immediately to gain by it, and Russia much to lose.

Yet those who reason that the thing could not have occurred would speak with justice, if Germany and France were alone of any account in Europe. Their mistake is in forgetting that the new empire which now throws its shadow across the Continent is after all but one of four great powers of the first class, among whom the military supremacy of the world is, and long has been, distributed. They forget above all that although two of these have succumbed to Prussian arms in decisive single combat, there remains one which still believes, or tries to believe herself fully a match for the victor. Stranger than all, those who talk so much of the lessons of Jena, of Stein's and Scharnhorst's skill in breathing new life into the crushed soul of their country, and of the sudden reversal of defeat which followed the address of Frederick William and the song of Arndt, ignore entirely the conditions under which Prussia drew the sword in the war of independence. What would have been but desperate and foolish in her had she stood alone, was hopeful and just in the then state of Europe. Russia was pouring into Poland the heavy legions unwearied with their task of chasing the French eagles westward. English ships lay before each German port ready to cover the entry of English agents bringing English arms and subsidies. Austria, occupying by her central geographical position the whole flank of the future theatre of war, was arming slowly and secretly with the design already formed of striking in and turning the struggle hopelessly against Napoleon, should he prove, as he did prove, unable to strike down the northern allies in his first fierce onset. Even dull Catholic Bavaria, which owed so much of seeming grandeur to France, was already looking forward to the day when she could safely turn her arms against the hated protector of the Rhenish Confederation, and carry its lesser members with her. There is a present fashion, both in and out of Germany, of speaking of Blücher and Gneisenau as leading the Prussians on to victory in 1813. The army which Blücher actually led, and Gneisenau guided, to that terrible overthrow of Macdonald on the Katzbach, which was the presage of his master's greater disaster on the Elster — was in reality very largely composed of Russians, placed under the old German hero no less from sound motives of policy, than out of respect for his genuine fighting power. In brief, it was only as one member of a great alliance that Prussia rose from her humiliation to fresh grandeur — to power in Europe beyond that achieved by Frederick, won by victories that threw even Frederick's into the shade.

Is this a lesson that Frederick's successors are likely to ignore, when men talk of a new Jena, and its teachings, and apply the words to Prussia's ancient enemy? Far from it. Those that weigh the contingencies of European politics as they affect Berlin, and strive to forecast their future turns, are men essentially of historic minds, though gifted with the power of grasping the conditions of the days they live in. Neither Prince Bismarck nor Count Moltke are likely to fall into the vulgar belief that the next serious Continental crisis must inevitably be but a repetition of the last, a duel between Germany and France, with the latter thoroughly overweighted. The very haste lately shown to bring it on in this special shape proved their conviction that it could entail no serious danger to the empire, and that such could come only when 