kept by Ritterdom.”  Here we see the strange stern, medieval, crusading atmosphere which lies behind the unpleasant combinations, so familiar to us to-day in France and Belgium, of Uhlans and religion, of culture and violence, of “Germanisation” and devastation.  When we hear the German professors of to-day preaching of the spread of German culture by the German arms, and when we feel disgust at the exaggerated religious phraseology which pervades the Kaiser’s oratory and seems to accord so ill with his policy and ambitions, we must remember the peculiar origins of the Prussian State and how comparatively recent those origins are.  “I have once before had occasion,” said the Kaiser at Marienburg in East Prussia on June 5, 1902, “to say in this place how Marienburg, this unique Eastern bulwark, the point of departure for the culture of the lands east of the Vistula, will always be a symbol for our German mission.  There is work for us again to-day.  Polish arrogance wishes to lay hands on Germanism, and I am constrained to call my people to the defence of its national possessions.  Here in Marienburg I proclaim that I expect all the brothers of the Order of St. John to be at my service when I call upon them to protect German ways and German customs.”  The Kaiser’s crusading appeals are not hypocritical or consciously insincere:  they are simply many centuries out of date—­a grotesque medley of medieval romanticism and royal megalomania.  What was possible for the warrior knights in North-East Germany five or six centuries ago is a tragic absurdity and an outrageous crime to-day among a spirited and sensitive people like the Poles—­still more so in a highly civilised national State such as Belgium or France.  It is an absurdity that only a theatrical monarch could conceive and a crime that only a military autocracy could attempt to enforce.

In the sixteenth century the Reformation, spreading throughout the North of Europe, undermined the basis of the Teutonic Order.  The Grand Master of the time transformed himself into a Lutheran Prince holding the hereditary Duchy of Prussia as a vassal of the King of the neighbouring Slavonic State of Poland.  In 1611 the Duchy was amalgamated with the territory of Brandenburg farther west, and in 1647 the enlarged Prussian territories won their emancipation from Poland.  Prussia now became a distinct State, essentially German in character (as opposed to the Poles and Lithuanians on its Eastern border), but still remaining for a time outside the community of the other German States.

The union between Prussia and Brandenburg had brought Prussia under the rule of the House of Hohenzollern, which, although originally a South German family, had borne rule in Brandenburg since 1415.  Under the Hohenzollerns Prussia rapidly increased in territory and influence until in 1701 the ruler of the day, the grandfather of Frederick the Great, took on himself the title of King.  Under Frederick the Great,