On the position of Italy it is not necessary to dwell. It had long been
suspected that she was a doubtful factor in the Triple Alliance, and the
event has proved that this suspicion was correct. But though Italy has
participated in the war, her action had no part in producing it. And we
need not here indicate the course and the motives of her policy.



7. _Germany_.


Having thus indicated briefly the position, the perils, and the ambitions
of the other Great Powers of Europe, let us turn to consider the proper
subject of this essay, the policy of Germany. And first let us dwell on the
all-important fact that Germany, as a Great Power, is a creation of the
last fifty years. Before 1866 there was a loose confederation of German
States, after 1870 there was an Empire of the Germans. The transformation
was the work of Bismarck, and it was accomplished by "blood and iron."
Whether it could have been accomplished otherwise is matter of speculation.
That it was accomplished so is a fact, and a fact of tragic significance.
For it established among Germans the prestige of force and fraud, and gave
them as their national hero the man whose most characteristic act was the
falsification of the Ems telegram. If the unification could have been
achieved in 1848 instead of in 1870, if the free and generous idealism of
that epoch could have triumphed, as it deserved to, if Germans had not
bartered away their souls for the sake of the kingdom of this world, we
might have been spared this last and most terrible act in the bloody drama
of European history. If even, after 1866, 1870 had not been provoked, the
catastrophe that is destroying Europe before our eyes might never have
overwhelmed us. In the crisis of 1870 the French minister who fought so