FROM A SPEECH ON THE MILITARY BILL

IN THE GERMAN IMPERIAL DIET, FEBRUARY 6TH, 1888


When I say that we must constantly endeavor to be equal to all
contingencies, I mean by that to claim that we must make greater
exertions than other powers in order to attain the same result, because
of our geographical position. We are situated in the middle of Europe.
We have at least three fronts of attack. France has only its eastern
frontier, Russia only its western frontier, on which it can be attacked.
We are, moreover, in consequence of the whole development of the world's
history, in consequence of our geographical position, and perhaps in
consequence of the slighter degree of internal cohesion which the German
nation as compared with others has thus far possessed, more exposed than
any other people to the risk of a coalition. God has placed us in a
situation in which we are prevented by our neighbors from sinking into
any sort of indolence or stagnation. He has set at our side the most
war-like and the most restless of nations, the French; and he has
permitted warlike inclinations, which in former centuries existed in no
such degree, to grow strong in Russia. Thus we get a certain amount of
spurring on both sides, and are forced into exertions which otherwise
perhaps we should not make. The pikes in the European carp-pond prevent
us from becoming carps, by letting us feel their prickles on both our
flanks; they constrain us to exertions which perhaps we should not
voluntarily make; they constrain us Germans also to a harmony among
ourselves that is repugnant to our inmost nature: but for them, our
tendency would rather be to separate. But the Franco-Russian press in
which we are caught forces us to hold together, and by its pressure it