Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/209

Rh his tomb in the Kyffhäuser and that the ravens of ill omen no longer wheeled around the mountain. What a spectacle it was when the much ridiculed and scoffed at German Michel was suddenly aroused from his sleep! How he stretched his huge limbs, how he shook his shield until the thunders of Heaven were awakened! How Europe trembled when he stamped upon the ground! How he threw the insolent foe into the dust with a mighty stroke of his sword! How he called with the voice of a trumpet—“Das ganze Deutschland soll es sein!” (“All Germany, united, our fatherland shall be!”) And how all mankind looked with amazement upon the gigantic hero!

What a glorious time! Every German heart, the wide world over, beat with admiration and gratitude for the kinsmen in the old home, and wherever the German mothertongue was heard, the joyful chorus resounded: “At last Germans again have a Fatherland!” Every German breast thrilled with a bolder assurance and every drop of German blood was warmed by the newly arisen sun of German honor and German greatness.

Many years have passed since then, and again we see Germania before us in the wreath of victory: now she is not crowned with the laurel won on distant battlefields; she is here before our eyes, on our own soil, adorned with the civic crown, which she gained in the peaceful contest of nations on the fields of invention, of art, of creative labor, of fruitful endeavor, of civilization. Here she stands, not only one of many, but among the first in the contest. All the world knows, it has heard and read, what she can do in war—but what Germany can do in peace, that she shows us here.

Let us confess that many of us had hardly dared to hope for so much. We still remembered the humiliating display of Germany at the Philadelphia Exposition in the