V.


THE CASE FOR GERMANY

Having put in the last chapter some of the points which seem to throw
the immediate blame of the war on Germany, it would be only fair in the
present chapter to show how in the long run and looking to the general
European situation to-day as well as to the history of Germany in the
past, the war had become inevitable, and in a sense necessary, as a
stage in the evolution of European politics.

After the frightful devastation of Germany by the religious dissensions
of the early part of the seventeenth century and the Thirty Years War,
it fell to Frederick the Great, not only to lay a firm foundation for
the Prussian State but to elevate it definitely as a rival to Austria in
the leadership of Germany. Thenceforth Prussia grew in power and
influence, and became the nucleus of a new Germany. It would almost seem
that things could not well have been otherwise. Germany was seeking for
a new root from which to grow. Clerical and ultra-Catholic Austria was
of no use for this purpose. Bavaria was under the influence of France.
Lutheran Prussia attracted the best elements of the Teutonic mind. It
seems strange, perhaps, that the sandy wastes of the North-East, and its
rather arid, dour population, _should_ have become the centre of growth
for the new German nation, considering the latter's possession of its
own rich and vital characteristics, and its own fertile and beautiful
lands; but so it was. Perhaps the general German folk, with their
speculative, easygoing, almost sentimental tendencies, _needed_ this