Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/340

 of honesty and courage forbid one to do certain things, just as the access to certain fields is interdicted in the army maneuvers. But the decision as to what has to be done is a very different matter, and no one can be sure of it beforehand, for politics are a task which can be compared only to the navigation of unknown waters. One does not know what the weather will be or how the currents will flow, nor what storms will be raging. There is in politics this additional factor of uncertainty that one is largely dependent on the decisions of others on whom one has counted and who have failed. One never can act with complete independence. And, when our friends whose assistance we need, although we cannot guarantee it, change their minds, our whole plan has failed. Positive enterprises are, therefore, very difficult in politics, and when they succeed you should be grateful to God who has given His blessing, and not find fault with details which one or the other may regret, but accept the situation as God has made it. For man cannot create or direct the stream of time. He can sail on it and steer his craft with more or less skill, be stranded and shipwrecked, or make a favorable port.

Since we now have made a favorable port, as I conclude from the predominant although not unanimous opinion of my countrymen, whose approval is all we have worked for, let us be satisfied, and let us keep and cherish what we have won in an Emperor and an empire as it is, and not as some individuals may wish it should be, with other institutions, and a little bit more of this or that religious or social detail that they may have at heart. Let us be careful to keep what we have, lest we lose it because we do not know how to appreciate it. Germany once was a powerful empire under the Carolingians, the Saxons, and the Hohenstaufens, and when she lost her place, five, yes six hundred years passed before she regained the use of her legs—if I may say so. Political and geological developments are equally slow. Layers are deposited one on the other, forming new banks and new mountains.