"France, a nation then healthier than it is now, but still of much
baser stock than our own, played for centuries the leading part in
Western Europe; she is even to-day 'over-capitalized,' as it were,
possessing a far greater hold over the modern world than her real
strength warrants. Even the savage Slavs have profited by our former
disunion, and the Russian autocracy not only rules millions of
German-speaking subjects, but threatens our frontiers with its great
numbers of barbarians, and exercises over the Balkan Peninsula, and
therefore over the all-important position of Constantinople, a power
very dangerous to European culture as a whole, and particularly to our
own culture--which is, of course, by far the highest culture of all.

"Some fifty years ago, acting upon the impulse of a group of great
writers and thinkers, our statesmen at last achieved that German unity
which had been the unrealized ideal of so many centuries. In a series
of wars we accomplished that unity, and we amply manifested our
superiority when we were once united by defeating with the greatest
ease and in the most fundamental fashion the French, whom the rest of
Europe then conceived to be the chief military power.

"From that moment we have incontestably stood in the sight of all as
the strongest people in the world, and yet because other and lesser
nations had the start of us, our actual international position, our
foreign possessions, the security that should be due to so supreme an
achievement, did not correspond to our real strength and abilities.
England had vast dependencies, and had staked out the unoccupied world
as her colonies. We had no colonies and no dependencies. France,
though decadent, was a menace to our peace upon the West. We could
have achieved the thorough conquest and dismemberment of France at any
time in the last forty years, and yet during the whole of that time