tremble at our own greatness, and shirk the sacrifices it demands from
us. Yet we do not wish to renounce the claim which we derive from our
glorious past. How rightly Fichte once judged his countrymen when he
said the German can never wish for a thing by itself; he must always
wish for its contrary also.

The Germans were formerly the best fighting men and the most warlike
nation of Europe. For a long time they have proved themselves to be the
ruling people of the Continent by the power of their arms and the
loftiness of their ideas. Germans have bled and conquered on countless
battlefields in every part of the world, and in late years have shown
that the heroism of their ancestors still lives in the descendants. In
striking contrast to this military aptitude they have to-day become a
peace-loving--an almost "too" peace-loving--nation. A rude shock is
needed to awaken their warlike instincts, and compel them to show their
military strength.

This strongly-marked love of peace is due to various causes.

It springs first from the good-natured character of the German people,
which finds intense satisfaction in doctrinaire disputations and
partisanship, but dislikes pushing things to an extreme. It is connected
with another characteristic of the German nature. Our aim is to be just,
and we strangely imagine that all other nations with whom we exchange
relations share this aim. We are always ready to consider the peaceful
assurances of foreign diplomacy and of the foreign Press to be no less
genuine and true than our own ideas of peace, and we obstinately resist
the view that the political world is only ruled by interests and never
from ideal aims of philanthropy. "Justice," Goethe says aptly, "is a
quality and a phantom of the Germans." We are always inclined to assume