СНАР. XXIV.

Yet it represents the

unity of the nation.

the new Empire represents one element only, that German royalty which Otto held before his fateful journey to Rome. So historic sentiment may imagine the present Empire to be such a kingdom as that of Otto would have been had it, remaining purely German, been extended to include all the regions which the Germans now inhabit from the Meuse to the Vistula, and may figure to itself the Emperor William of Hohenzollern as the successor not so evidently of the Hapsburg monarchs of the eighteenth century as of the Saxon King Henry I who in an expedi tion against the Wendish heathen stormed their fort of Brannibor, and there, to guard his north-eastern frontier, laid the foundations of that Mark of Brandenburg which has grown into the Prussian monarchy.

If therefore we regard either the Germanic nation as it was before it entangled itself with Italy and Rome, or the Germanic nation as it was when after the days of Charles the Fifth Italy and Rome had been lost to it, but before it had been cleft in twain by the Treaty of Westphalia, we may call the new Empire the legitimate representative of the unity of the nation as embodied in its monarchy. It is a militant monarchy, as were the monarchies of Charles and Otto. It is a national monarchy, for it includes all Germans except those who live under the sceptre of the Hapsburgs, those who in the Baltic provinces of Russia are forced to obey an alien and ill-beloved Power, and those more fortunate Germans who in the northern and eastern cantons of Switzerland have given to Europe an admirable example of ordered freedom. For the chief of this monarchy the imperial name has been revived, both on account of its venerable associations and because it serves to express, as it did in the last few centuries of its life, the titular superiority of the head of a federal state over the kings, grand dukes, and other princes who compose

'German

Emperor,

the Germanic body. In this respect it partially repro- CHAP.
duces the relation which the Emperors of the seventeenth XXIV.
and eighteenth centuries bore to the electors of that time.
To the earlier Middle Ages, the idea of an emperor of a
local area, whether great or small, was no doubt repug-
nant, for mediaeval doctrine could imagine only one
Emperor, lord of all Christians, just as it could recognize
only one spiritual head of the Catholic Church. It is per-
haps some lingering sense of this feeling, as well as a wish
not to infringe on the territorial rights of the heads of the
several States, that has caused the official style of the Title is
sovereign to be 'German Emperor,' that is, Emperor in
Germany, or Emperor of German race, not 'Emperor of
Germany.' The Germans have indeed had reason to
regret the influence of the ancient title, for it was through
the efforts to maintain the commanding place in Europe
which this title carried with it that their sovereigns were
distracted from the duties they owed to their own people,
and that princes sprang up who wrested from the crown
nearly all the authority which had once belonged to it.
But if in this the influence of that great shadow of the past
be thought pernicious, let it be therewithal remembered
that to the ancient Empire is in large measure due this
latest revival of national existence. It was the tradition
of a glorious past when Germany led the world that made

е

e The Emperor Frederick mentions in the fragments of his Diary that have been made public (Bismarck disputed the authenticity of part of them) that this motive was present to the mind of those who called the new Empire into being. Bismarck says (Reflections and Reminiscences, ch. xxiii) that when King William consented to change his title, he preferred that of 'Emperor of Germany,' and was with difficulty driven to consent to German Emperor,' which Bismarck urged because it spared the susceptibilities of the German potentates. The Crown Prince Frederick had at first desired 'King of Germany,' because he thought the restoration of the Roman Empire by Charles the Great a misfortune for the nation.

not

'Emperor of Germany.'

СНАР.
XXIV.

National

and Ger

many.

the Germans again a united people, the central power of continental Europe. And though the deep-rooted Prussian sentiment of King William I was at first averse to the adoption of that historic style which commended itself to the imagination of his son (afterwards the Emperor Frederick), the name of Emperor has served both to reconcile the greatest of the German princes to the loss of their titular independence and to imprint more deeply upon the mind of the people the sense that they are one not only in blood and speech, but also in the historical continuity of their national life.

The parallelism between the course of events in Gerunity in Italy many and in Italy which has several times already been referred to is strikingly seen in the events of 1870. As the war of 1866, in putting an end to the long dualism of Austria and Prussia, made a united Germany possible and simultaneously gave to Italy her Venetian provinces, so the war of 1870, while it brought about the re-establishment of the Germanic Empire, completed the unity of Italy also by making Rome again her possession and her capital. The Popedom which, in the thirteenth century, inflicted a fatal wound upon the Holy Empire, had in modern times allied itself with Austria and the petty despotisms of the Italian peninsula, had done its utmost to check as well the union as the freedom of the Italian people, and had raised almost to the rank of an article of faith those pretensions to temporal sway which had been one cause of its hostility to the mediaeval Emperors. It now found itself involved in the misfortunes of its old ally France, and saw that temporal sway perish along with the triumph of its former Teutonic enemies. The first German victories compelled the recall of the French troops from Rome, and allowed the Italians to establish themselves there; a few months later the swelling cur

XXIV.

rent of success brought about the union of North and CHAP. South Germany in a single state. The same great struggle which restored political unity to the one nation cemented it in the other; and at the very moment when the imperial name was revived in the Transalpine countries the ancient imperial seat upon the Tiber became the capital of an Italian monarchy. The two great races whose national life had been sacrificed to the mediaeval Empire regained it together, and regained it by the defeat of that Empire's ancient antagonists, the ecclesiastical power and the monarch of France. The triumph of the principle of nationality was complete. Old wrongs were redressed; old problems solved. The world seemed to have closed one page in its history, and men paused to wonder and conjecture what the next might have to unfold.

EPILOGUE

THAT which the next page did unfold proved different from what men had expected. It was a new Germany, it was a new Italy, that had been thus consolidated into new monarchies. The Germany of to-day is unlike the Germany of 1830 or even the Germany of 1860. Population and wealth have in many regions grown, and towns have extended themselves with a speed that reminds the traveller of the cities of Western America. More effectively than any other nation of Europe, the Germans have turned to account the advances made by scientific discovery. The industry of the people, the abundance of minerals in some districts, the excellence of the railway system, the efficiency of the administration, the admirable organization of instruction in all grades, and not least in the sphere of theoretical and applied science, have led to a

developement of manufactures and of commerce which has been followed by a correspondingly marked devotion of national thought and effort to every form of material progress. Projects of expansion beyond the seas, not so much to obtain an outlet for colonization as to secure new markets for German trade-projects in which Prussia never indulged, but which seemed appropriate to a German Empire - have been carried out by the acquisition of territories in Africa, China, and the islands of the Pacific. Learning is still cultivated, research is still prosecuted, with unflagging energy; but philosophy, poetry, and art hold a less conspicuous place than they did in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Italy has advanced less rapidly, because her mineral resources are less ample, and her people, who had been worse governed than the Germans, have had more leeway to make up. But in Italy also political unification has stimulated material progress, and material progress has absorbed more and more of the intelligence and energy of the population of the northern half of the peninsula.

In both countries there was a certain disappointment because freedom and unity had not brought all the peace and contentment for which men had hoped; and many thought that the generation which had entered into the enjoyment of freedom and unity stood on a lower moral level than the generation which had toiled and fought for those blessings. In both countries, while the thoughts of the educated class have been occupied with practical and economic questions rather than with political theories or religious reforms, the masses of the people, stirred by a new antagonism to the wealthier classes and a new passion. for equality, have begun to busy themselves with projects for so transforming the structure of society as to secure a