Another thing gave him great solicitude, taxed to the utmost his fertile brain; and that was the rising and wide-spreading doctrines of Socialism,—­which was to Germany what Nihilism is to Russia and Fenianism was to Ireland; based on discontent, unbelief, and desperate schemes of unpractical reform, leading to the assassination even of emperors themselves.  How to deal with this terrible foe to all governments, all laws, and all institutions was a most perplexing question.  At first he was inclined to the most rigorous measures, to a war of utter extermination; but how could he deal with enemies he could neither see nor find, omnipresent and invisible, and unscrupulous as satanic furies,—­fanatics whom no reasoning could touch and no laws control, whether human or divine?  As experience and thought enlarged his mental vision, he came to the conclusion that the real source and spring of that secret and organized hostility which he deplored, but was unable to reach and to punish, were evils in government and evils in the structure of society,—­aggravating inequality, grinding poverty, ignorance, and the hard struggle for life.  Accordingly, he devoted his energies to improve the general condition of the people, and make the struggle for life easier.  In his desire to equalize burdens he resorted to indirect rather than direct taxation,—­to high tariffs and protective duties to develop German industry; throwing to the winds his earlier beliefs in the theories of the Manchester school of political economy, and all speculative ideas as to the blessings of free-trade for the universe in general.  He bought for the government the various Prussian railroads, in order to have uniformity of rates and remove vexatious discriminations, which only a central power could effect.  In short, he aimed to develop the material resources of the country, both to insure financial prosperity and to remove those burdens which press heavily on the poor.

On one point, however, his policy was inexorable; and that was to suffer no reduction of the army, but rather to increase it to the utmost extent that the nation could bear,—­not with the view of future conquests or military aggrandizement, as some thought, but as an imperative necessity to guard the empire from all hostile attacks, whether from France or Russia, or both combined.  A country surrounded with enemies as Germany is, in the centre of Europe, without the natural defences of the sea which England enjoys, or great chains of mountains on her borders difficult to penetrate and easy to defend, as is the case with Switzerland, must have a superior military force to defend her, in case of future contingencies which no human wisdom can foresee.  Nor is it such a dreadful burden to support a peace establishment of four hundred and fifty thousand men as some think,—­one soldier for every one hundred inhabitants, trained and disciplined to be intelligent and industrious when his short term of three years of active service shall have expired:  much easier to bear, I fancy, than the burden of supporting five paupers or more to every hundred inhabitants, as in England and Scotland.