It was impossible that the German will should impose itself without
coming at once into conflict with these other national wills. It was
impossible that the German ideal should seek to realize itself without
coming into conflict with the mere desire to live, let alone the
self-respect, of everybody else.

And the consequence of such a conflict in ideals and wills translated
into practice was this war.

* * * * *

But the war would not have come nor would it have taken the shape that
it did, but for two other factors in the problem which we must next
consider. These two other factors are, first, the position and
tradition of Prussia among the German States; secondly, the peculiar
authority exercised by the Imperial House of Hapsburg-Lorraine at
Vienna over its singularly heterogeneous subjects.


(3) PRUSSIA.

The Germans have always been, during their long history, a race
inclined to perpetual division and sub-division, accompanied by war
and lesser forms of disagreement between the various sections. Their
friends have called this a love of freedom, their enemies political
incompetence; but, without giving it a good or a bad name, the plain
fact has been, century after century, that the various German tribes
would not coalesce. Any one of them was always willing to take service
with the Roman Empire, in the early Roman days, against any one of the