The Junker made a force of Prussia; he made Prussia itself.  It was due to him that she passed after 1815 from the form of a Polizeistaat to the form of Kulturstaat, the latter only an expansion of the former.  In place of a watchful, regulating, and vexatious State she became an organized State, the instructor of youth, the protector of religion, the source of inspiration for agricultural reforms, and all great commercial and industrial enterprises.  This State was not an emanation from the national will, but the creator of a nation, the living and moving self-incarnation of the Hegelian “idea,” that is to say, the Divine thought.

Of all the German aristocracy the noble of Pomerania or Brandenburg, the Prussian Junker, represented this social type most definitely.  In the south the liberal tendencies—­to be exact, the memories of the French Revolution—­persisted far into the nineteenth century.  But it is well known that German unity was accomplished by military force and against liberalism.

After 1871, and even after Sadowa, the problem of interior policy which presented itself was that of the “Prussianization” of Germany.  At one time it seemed that Bismarck was on the point of succeeding in it.  What was that national liberal party upon which he depended for so long?  It was the old liberal party, with advanced tendencies tainted with democratic liberalism and even with cosmopolitanism, keeping up its relations with the intellectuals, the university men, who made so much noise with pen and voice about 1848 and later.  They dreamed of the unity of Germany in the democratic liberty and moral hegemony of their nation, having become in Europe the sobered heir of the French Revolution.

Under the influence of Bismarck they sacrificed to their dream of unity, to their national dream, their liberal dream, and they secured for the Chancellor the support of the upper bourgeoisie.

It was indeed the Prussianization of Germany, but in that spirit and in that system contemporary German militarism would never have fructified.  It was contrary to the characteristic tendencies of a monarchical State supported by a conservative caste, which was also particularist, military, and agricultural.  A State of this kind tends to become a closed State.

What then happened?  An event of capital importance which everybody knows, but of which we only now begin to see the consequences.  It was the radical transformation of Germany from an agricultural to an industrial nation.  In its origin this phenomenon dates from before the nineteenth century.  By 1848 it had become perceptible.  Since 1866, and especially since 1871, it has dominated the entire social evolution of the empire.  Here, in fact, is the revolution.  It partakes of the character of a tragedy, it has overturned the conditions of life throughout the entire German territory.

At the close of the War of Independence, four out of five Germans lived on the land, two out of three were engaged in agriculture.  By 1895 the agricultural population was only 35.7 per cent.  That, supported by industry and commerce, kept continually increasing.  In 1895 it was 50.6 per cent.