Throughout the German empire the traveler is brought constantly face to
face with the memorials that have been erected by a grateful people to
the genius of the Iron Chancellor. Bismarck richly deserves the tribute
that is paid to his memory, but a man to be honored in this way must
exert a tangible and an obvious influence.

And yet, in a broader sense, the preëminence of Germany is due in far
greater measure to two men whose names are not so frequently to be
found inscribed upon towers and monuments. In the very midst of the
havoc and devastation wrought by the Napoleon wars,--at the very moment
when the German people seemed hopelessly crushed and defeated,--an
intellect more penetrating than that of Bismarck grasped the logic of
the situation. With the inspiration that comes with true insight, the
philosopher Fichte issued his famous Addresses to the German people.
With clear-cut argument couched in white-hot words, he drove home the
great principle that lies at the basis of United Germany and upon the
results of which Bismarck and Von Moltke and the first Emperor erected
the splendid structure that to-day commands the admiration of the world.
Fichte told the German people that their only hope lay in universal,
public education. And the kingdom of Prussia--impoverished, bankrupt,
war-ridden, and war-devastated--heard the plea. A great scheme that
comprehended such an education was already at hand. It had fallen almost
stillborn from the only kind of a mind that could have produced it,--a
mind that was suffused with an overwhelming love for humanity and
incomparably rich with the practical experiences of a primary
schoolmaster. It had fallen from the mind of Pestalozzi, the Swiss
reformer, who thus stands with Fichte as one of the vital factors in the
development of Germany's educational supremacy.