They actually attacked us for having fulfilled the wishes of Russia even before they had been expressed.  We did this also in the Congress of Berlin; but it will not happen again.  If Russia will officially request us to support with the Sultan, as suzerain of Bulgaria, the steps which she may take in her desire to reestablish in Bulgaria conditions according to the decisions of the Congress, I shall not hesitate to advise His Majesty the Emperor to do so.  Our sense of loyalty to our neighbor demands this, for we should cherish neighborly relations with him, let the present feelings be what they may.  Together we should protect the monarchical institutions which are common to both of us, and set our faces, in the interest of order, against all the opponents of it in Europe.  Russia’s monarch, moreover, fully understands that these are the duties of the allied monarchs.  If the Emperor of Russia should find that the interests of his great empire of one hundred million people demand war, he will wage it, I do not doubt.  But I do not believe that these interests can possibly demand a war against us, nor do I believe that these interests demand war at the present time at all.

To sum up:  I do not believe in an immediate interruption of peace, and I ask you to discuss this bill independently of such a thought or apprehension, looking upon it as a means of making the great strength which God has placed in the German nation fully available.  If we do not need all the troops, it is not necessary to summon them.  We are trying to avoid the contingency when we shall need them.

This attempt is as yet made rather difficult for us by the threatening newspaper articles in the foreign press, and I should like to admonish these foreign editors to discontinue such threats.  They do not lead anywhere.  The threats which we see made—­not by the governments, but by the press—­are really incredibly stupid, when we stop to reflect that the people making them imagine they could frighten the proud and powerful German empire by certain intimidating figures made by printer’s ink and shallow words.  People should not do this.  It would then be easier for us to be more obliging to our two neighbors.  Every country after all is sooner or later responsible for the windows which its press has smashed.  The bill will be rendered some day, and will consist of the ill-feeling of the other country.  We are easily influenced—­perhaps too easily—­by love and kindness, but quite surely never by threats!  We Germans fear God, and naught else in the world!  It is this fear of God which makes us love and cherish peace.  If in spite of this anybody breaks the peace, he will discover that the ardent patriotism of 1813, which called to the standards the entire population of Prussia—­weak, small, and drained to the marrow as it then was—­has today become the common property of the whole German nation.  Attack the German nation anywhere, and you will find it armed to a man, and every man with the firm belief in his heart:  God will be with us.