George of Anspach-Baireuth was perhaps the finest character among the Protestant princes of the Reformation, without whom the good fight could not have been fought.  When Charles V. besieged Metz in the winter (which, with Lorraine, had just been torn from Germany by the French), and was compelled by the cold to withdraw, it was a Hohenzollern prince, one of the first soldiers of the time, who led the rear-guard over ground which another Hohenzollern, Prince Frederick Charles, has again made famous.  Later, in Frederick the Great, the house furnished one of the firmest hands that ever held a royal sceptre.  His successors have been men of power.

They are good types of their stock, and Prussia is worthy of the leadership to which she is advancing.  In the cathedral of Speyer stand the statues of the mighty German Kaisers, who six hundred years ago wore the purple, and, after their wild battle with the elements of disorder about them, were buried at last in its crypts.  They are majestic figures for the most part, idealised by the sculptor, and yet probably not far beyond nature; for the imperial dignity was not hereditary, but given to the man chosen for it, and the choice was often a worthy one.  They were leaders in character as well as station, and it is right to give their images the bearing of men strong in war and council.  I felt that if the ancient dignity was to be revived in our own day, and the sceptre of Barbarossa and Rudolph of Hapsburg to be extended again over a united Germany, there had been few princes more worthy to hold it than the modern Hohenzollern.

In speaking of this great people so as to give the best idea of them in a short space, I have seized on what seemed to me in those days the most salient thing, and described various phases of their life as pervaded by it.  The fighting spirit was bred in their bones.  They were a nation of warriors almost as much as the Spartans, and stood ready on the instant to obey the tap of the drum calling to arms.  Such constant suggestions of war were painful.  The spiked helmet is never an amiable head-dress; “but,” said the representative Prussian, “there is no help for it.  We have been a weak people wedged in between powerful unscrupulous neighbours, and have had a life-and-death struggle to wage almost constantly with one or the other of these, or all at once.  And in what way is our situation different now?  Is Russia less ambitious?  How many swords has France beaten into ploughshares?  What pruning-hooks have been made from the spears of Austria?  Let us know on what conditions we can live other than wearing our spiked helmets, and we will embrace them.”  It was not an easy matter to argue down your resolute Prussian when he turned to you warmly, after you had been crying peace to him.