received; it is to our advantage to defend ourselves by anticipating the
attack, and to strike at once; an offensive war is a better one for us
to wage, and I accordingly ask the Imperial Diet for a credit of a
milliard or half a milliard, in order to undertake to-day the war
against our two neighbors,"--well, gentlemen, I do not know whether you
would have such confidence in me as to grant such a request. I hope not.
But if you did, it would not be enough for me. If we in Germany desire
to wage a war with the full effect of our national power, it must be a
war with which all who help to wage it, and all who make sacrifices for
it--with which, in a word, all the nation--must be in sympathy. It must
be a people's war; it must be a war that is carried on with the same
enthusiasm as that of 1870, when we were wickedly attacked. I remember
still the joyful shouts that rang in our ears at the Cologne station; it
was the same thing from Berlin to Cologne; it was the same thing here in
Berlin. The waves of popular approval bore us into the war, whether we
liked it or not. So it must be, if a national force like ours is to be
brought fully into operation. It will be very difficult, however, to
make it clear to the provinces, to the federal states and to their
people, that a war is inevitable, that it must come. It will be asked:
"Are you so sure of it? Who knows?" If we finally come to the point of
making the attack, all the weight of the imponderables, which weigh much
more than the material weights, will be on the side of our antagonist
whom we have attacked. "Holy Russia" will be filled with indignation at
the attack. France will glisten with weapons to the Pyrenees. The same
thing will happen everywhere. A war into which we are not borne by the
will of the people--such a war will of course be carried on, if in the
last instance the established authorities consider and have declared it
to be necessary. It will be carried on with energy and perhaps
victoriously, as soon as the men come under fire and have seen blood;
but there will not be back of it, from the start, the same dash and heat