In January, 1869, I was sent to Heidelberg by the Minister of Public Instruction, Victor Duruy, to study the organization of German universities.  Germany was for me the land of metaphysics, music, and poetry.  I was greatly astonished to find that outside of the lecture courses the only thing discussed was the war which Prussia was about to make on France.  Invited to a soiree, I heard it whispered behind me, Vielleicht ist er ein franzoesischer Spion—­“Perhaps he is a French spy.”  Such were the words as I caught them.  At the beer garden a student seated himself near me.  He said to me, “We are going to war with you.  We shall take Alsace and Lorraine.”  That night I could see from my window, looking out on the Neckar, the students clad in their club costumes floating down the river on an illuminated raft singing the famous song in honor of Bluecher, who “taught the Welches the way of the Germans.”  And at the university itself the lectures of Treitschke, attended by excited crowds, were heated harangues against the French, inciting to hatred and to war.  Seeing that nothing was thought of but the preparation for war, I came back at the Easter vacation of 1869 convinced that hostilities would ensue.  I returned to Heidelberg some time later and became acquainted with other persons, other centres of ideas.  I understood then that opinion in Germany was divided between two opposite doctrines.  The general aspiration was for the unity of Germany, but there was no agreement as to the way of conceiving and realizing this unity.  The thesis of Treitschke was, Freiheit durch Einheit, “liberty through unity,” that is to say, unity first, unity before all; liberty later, when circumstances should permit.  And to realize at once this unity, which really was the only thing that mattered, the enrollment of all Germany under the command of Prussia for a war against France.

Now the formula of Treitschke was opposed by that of Bluntschli, Einheit durch Freiheit—­“Unity through liberty.”  This doctrine, which counted at that time some eminent advocates, aimed first to safeguard the independence and unity of the German States and then to establish between them on that basis a federated union.  And as it contemplated in the heart of Germany a union without hegemony, so it conceived of German unity as something to be realized without harm to other nations, and especially without harm to France.  It was to be a free Germany in a free world.

Germany at that epoch was at the parting of the ways.  Should she follow a tendency still living in many and noble minds or should she abandon it entirely, to march head down in the ways in which Prussia had entangled her?  That was the question.  The party of war, the party of unity as a means of attacking and despoiling France, the Prussian party, gained the day.  And its success rendered its preponderance definitive.  Since then those who have undertaken to remain faithful to an ideal of liberty and humanity have been annihilated.