But the influence of Frederic was seen in a more marked manner in the inauguration of a national policy directed chiefly to military aggrandizement.  If there ever was a purely military monarchy, it is Prussia; and this kingdom has been to Europe what Sparta was to Greece.  All the successors of Frederic have followed out his policy with singular tenacity.  All their habits and associations have been military.  The army has been the centre of their pride, ambition, and hope.  They have made their country one vast military camp.  They have exempted no classes from military services; they have honored and exalted the army more than any other interest.  The principal people of the land are generals.  The resources of the kingdom are expended in standing armies; and these are a perpetual menace.  A network of military machinery controls all other pursuits and interests.  The peasant is a military slave.  The student of the university can be summoned to a military camp.  Precedence in rank is given to military men over merchant princes, over learned professors, over distinguished jurists.  The genius of the nation has been directed to the perfection of military discipline and military weapons.  The government is always prepared for war, and has been rarely averse to it.  It has ever been ready to seize a province or pick a quarrel.  The late war with France was as much the fault of Prussia as of the government of Napoleon.  The great idea of Prussia is military aggrandizement; it is no longer a small kingdom, but a great empire, more powerful than either Austria or France.  It believes in new annexations, until all Germany shall be united under a Prussian Kaiser.  What Rome became, Prussia aspires to be.  The spirit, the animus, of Prussia is military power.  Travel in that kingdom,—­everywhere are soldiers, military schools, camps, arsenals, fortresses, reviews.  And this military spirit, evident during the last hundred years, has made the military classes arrogant, austere, mechanical, contemptuous.  This spirit pervades the nation.  It despises other nations as much as France did in the last century, or England after the wars of Napoleon.

But the great peculiarity of this military spirit is seen in the large standing armies, which dry up the resources of the nation and make war a perpetual necessity, at least a perpetual fear.  It may be urged that these armies are necessary to the protection of the state,—­that if they were disbanded, then France, or some other power, would arise and avenge their injuries, and cripple a state so potent to do evil.  It may be so; but still the evils generated by these armies must be fatal to liberty, and antagonistic to those peaceful energies which produce the highest civilization.  They are fatal to the peaceful virtues.  The great Schiller has said:—­

                                 “There exists
     An higher than the warrior’s excellence. 
     Great deeds of violence, adventures wild,
     And wonders of the moment,—­these are not they
     Which generate the high, the blissful,
     And the enduring majesty.”