of his fears: how Prussia had increased her resources since Sadowa;
how the national movement had placed her at the head of the other
German states, a mighty empire in process of formation and
rejuvenation, with the constant hope and desire for unity as the
incentive to their irresistible efforts; the system of compulsory
military service, which made them a nation of trained soldiers,
provided with the most effective arms of modern invention, with
generals who were masters in the art of strategy, proudly mindful
still of the crushing defeat they had administered to Austria; the
intelligence, the moral force that resided in that army, commanded as
it was almost exclusively by young generals, who in turn looked up to
a commander-in-chief who seemed destined to revolutionize the art of
war, whose prudence and foresight were unparalleled, whose correctness
of judgment was a thing to wonder at. And in contrast to that picture
of Germany he pointed to France: the Empire sinking into senile
decrepitude, sanctioned by the plebiscite, but rotten at its
foundation, destroying liberty, and therein stifling every idea of
patriotism, ready to give up the ghost as soon as it should cease to
satisfy the unworthy appetites to which it had given birth; then there
was the army, brave, it was true, as was to be expected from men of
their race, and covered with Crimean and Italian laurels, but vitiated
by the system that permitted men to purchase substitutes for a money
consideration, abandoned to the antiquated methods of African routine,
too confident of victory to keep abreast with the more perfect science
of modern times; and, finally, the generals, men for the most part not
above mediocrity, consumed by petty rivalries, some of them of an
ignorance beyond all belief, and at their head the Emperor, an ailing,
vacillating man, deceiving himself and everyone with whom he had
dealings in that desperate venture on which they were embarking, into
which they were all rushing blindfold, with no preparation worthy of