ABSTRACT
It was in the year 1890 that the storm burst upon our island; it had long been gathering. For more than thirty years before that time the brain of the German nation had been busy learning the lesson of war, a lesson that was not studied in order to gratify the military instincts of any particular class in the community, but a lesson learned and laid to heart by the collective wisdom and united manhood of the entire empire as the sole guarantee of their independence, and the single aim of their national existence. That warfare was the normal condition of peoples—that peace should be only a preparation for war—war a test, practice, and incentive to further war—and that commerce, agriculture, trade, and science should all be the subordinate assistants towards the development of the armed strength, of the empire— such, in brief, was the ruling idea which, first springing into modern life in the kingdom of Prussia about the middle of the nineteenth century, spread throughout the whole German people ere that century had reached its closing decade. Nor was this ruling principle a new idea in the minds of men. It was the first and oldest thought on earth. It went back beyond all the schools, and was older than the oldest philosophy. Rome had risen by it. Rome had passed away when she forgot it. The Goth had cherished it in the forests of the Vistula. The Hun had known it in the windy wastes of Asia. The Mahometan had carried it from Mecca to Chalons. All had conquered by it; all had been vanquished when they ceased to practise it. Of old this instinct of armed might had invariably degenerated with success. The soldier had become gradually merged into the citizen; a hundred various trades had sprung up to minister to the luxury of the drones who flocked to feast upon the spoils of conquest; riches accumulated; and leadership—becoming the prize of purse, and not the birthright of strength or genius—passed into the hands of the weak, the effeminate, and the incapable, to finally incur the inevitable penalty of lost dominion.
