the energies of nearly all Europe, the general causes can be easily
defined, and that without serious fear of contradiction by the
partisans of either side.

On the one hand, the Germanic peoples, especially that great majority
of them now organized as the German Empire under the hegemony of
Prussia, had for fully a lifetime and more been possessed of a certain
conception of themselves which may be not unjustly put into the form
of the following declaration. It is a declaration consonant with most
that has been written from the German standpoint during more than a
generation, and many of its phrases are taken directly from the
principal exponents of the German idea.


(I) THE GERMAN OBJECT.

"We the Germans are in spirit one nation. But we are a nation the
unity of which has been constantly forbidden for centuries by a number
of accidents. None the less that unity has always been an ideal
underlying our lives. Once or twice in the remote past it has been
nearly achieved, especially under the great German emperors of the
Middle Ages. Whenever it has thus been nearly achieved, we Germans
have easily proved ourselves the masters of other societies around us.
Most unfortunately our very strength has proved our ruin time and
again by leading us into adventures, particularly adventures in
Italy, which took the place of our national ideal for unity and
disturbed and swamped it. The reason we have been thus supreme
whenever we were united or even nearly united lay in the fact, which
must be patent to every observer, that our mental, moral, and
physical characteristics render us superior to all rivals. The German