Germany, up to 1866 renowned chiefly for her poets, musicians, and thinkers, had since been fed for nearly fifty years upon the doctrine that military force is the only power in the world worth considering.  Some of the German people still cling to the high ideals of their ancestors, but the majority had drunk deeply of the wine of conquest and were intoxicated with the idea that Germany’s mission in life was to conquer all the other nations of the world and rule them for their own good by German thoroughness and by German efficiency.  It may take many years to stamp this feeling out of the German nation.  As they have worshipped force and appealed to force as the settler of all questions, so they will listen to reason only after they have been thoroughly crushed by a superior force.  The sufferings brought upon the German nation by the war have had a great effect in making them doubt whether, after all, force is a good thing.  As long as the people could be kept enthusiastic through stories of wonderful victories over the Russians, the Serbians, and then the Roumanians, they were contented to endure all manner of hardships.

Someone has said that no people are happier than those living in a despotism, if the right kind of man is the despot.  So the German people, although they were governed strictly by the military rule, nevertheless, were contented as long as they were prosperous and victorious in war.  With the rumors and fears of defeat, however, they began to doubt their government.  There are indications that sweeping reforms in the election of representatives in the Reichstag and in the power of that body itself will take place before long.

The Russian revolution was in some respects a blow to the central powers.  In the first place the fact that Russia had a despot for a ruler while England, France, and Italy were countries where the people elected their law makers, made it impossible that there should be the best of understanding between the allies.  Then, again, the various peoples of Austria-Hungary, while they were not happy under the rule of the Hapsburg family, were afraid lest, if they became subjects of the Czar, it would be “jumping from the frying pan into the fire.”  They would rather bear the evils of the Austrian rule than risk what the Czar and the grand dukes might do to them.  Turkey, likewise, was bound to stick to Germany to the end, because of her fear that Russia would seize Constantinople.  When the new government of Russia, then, announced that they did not desire to annex by force any territory, but only wished to free the peoples who were in bondage, it removed the fear of the Turks as far as their capital city was concerned; it showed the Poles, Ruthenians, and Czechs of Austria that they were in no danger of being swallowed up in the Russian empire, but that, on the other hand, the Russians wanted them to be free, like themselves; it showed the German people how easily a whole nation, when united, could get rid of its rulers, and encouraged the bold spirits who had never favored the military rule.