other nation, as is proved by the whole development of history, by our geographical position, and the lesser degree of cohesiveness, which until now has characterized the German nation in comparison with others.  God has placed us where we are prevented, thanks to our neighbors from growing lazy and dull.  He has placed by our side the most warlike and restless of all nations, the French, and He has permitted warlike inclinations to grow strong in Russia, where formerly they existed to a lesser degree.  Thus we are given the spur, so to speak, from both sides, and are compelled to exertions which we should perhaps not be making otherwise.  The pikes in the European carp-pond are keeping us from being carps by making us feel their teeth on both sides.  They also are forcing us to an exertion which without them we might not make, and to a union among us Germans, which is abhorrent to us at heart.  By nature we are rather tending away, the one from the other.  But the Franco-Russian press within which we are squeezed compels us to hold together, and by pressure our cohesive force is greatly increased.  This will bring us to that state of being inseparable which all other nations possess, while we do not yet enjoy it.  But we must respond to the intentions of Providence by making ourselves so strong that the pikes can do nothing but encourage us.

Formerly in the years of the Holy Alliance—­I am just thinking of an American song which I learned of my late friend Motley:  “In good old colonial times, when we lived under a King”—­well those were the good old patriarchal times when we had many posts to guide us, and many dikes to protect us from the wild floods of Europe.  There were the German Union, and the real support and consummation of the German Union, the Holy Alliance.  We had support in Russia and in Austria, and, above all, the guaranty of our diffidence that we should never express an opinion before the others had spoken.

All this we have lost; we must help ourselves.  The Holy Alliance was wrecked in the Crimean War—­not through our fault.  The German Union has been destroyed by us, because the existence which we were granted within it was unbearable in the long run for ourselves and the German people as well.  After the dissolution of the German Union and the war of 1866, Prussia, as it was then, or North Germany, would have become isolated, if we had been obliged to count with the fact that nobody would be willing to pardon our new successes—­the great successes which we had won.  No great power looks with favor on the successes of its neighbors.

Our relations with Russia, however, were not disturbed by the experience of 1866.  In that year the memory of Count Buol’s policy and of the policy of Austria during the Crimean War was too fresh in Russia to permit the rise of the thought that Russia could assist the Austrian monarchy against the Prussian attack, or could renew the campaign, which Emperor Nicholas had fought for Austria in 1849—­ask your pardon, if I sit down for a moment.  I cannot stand so long.