Our primary and most obvious moral and political duty is to overcome these hereditary failings, and to lay a secure foundation for a healthy, consistent development of our power.

It must not be denied that the variety of forms of intellectual and social life arising from the like variety of the German nationality and political system offers valuable advantages.  It presents countless centres for the advancement of science, art, technical skill, and a high spiritual and material way of life in a steadily increasing development.  But we must resist the converse of these conditions, the transference of this richness in variety and contrasts into the domain of politics.

Above all must we endeavour to confirm and consolidate the institutions which are calculated to counteract and concentrate the centrifugal forces of the German nature—­the common system of defence of our country by land and sea, in which all party feeling is merged, and a strong national empire.

No people is so little qualified as the German to direct its own destinies, whether in a parliamentarian or republican constitution; to no people is the customary liberal pattern so inappropriate as to us.  A glance at the Reichstag will show how completely this conviction, which is forced on us by a study of German history, holds good to-day.

The German people has always been incapable of great acts for the common interest except under the irresistible pressure of external conditions, as in the rising of 1813, or under the leadership of powerful personalities, who knew how to arouse the enthusiasm of the masses, to stir the German spirit to its depths, to vivify the idea of nationality, and force conflicting aspirations into concentration and union.

We must therefore take care that such men are assured the possibility of acting with a confident and free hand in order to accomplish great ends through and for our people.

Within these limits, it is in harmony with the national German character to allow personality to have a free course for the fullest development of all individual forces and capacities, of all spiritual, scientific, and artistic aims.  “Every extension of the activities of the State is beneficial and wise, if it arouses, promotes, and purifies the independence of free and reasoning men; it is evil when it kills and stunts the independence of free men.” [F] This independence of the individual, within the limits marked out by the interests of the State, forms the necessary complement of the wide expansion of the central power, and assures an ample scope to a liberal development of all our social conditions.

[Footnote F:  Treitschke, “Politik,” i., Section 2.]