blood, gloriously decomposed, torn, blackened with powder, and riddled with bullets.  Now the strong arms of German non-commissioned officers carried them in the sultry heat of the midsummer afternoon, these miserable remnants hanging heavy and limp without a flutter, without a spark of trembling life in the silken folds; they looked like imprisoned kings, who with heads bowed down, and despair in their eyes, walked in chains behind the triumphant Roman chariots.

“Look,” sad Dr. Schrotter to Wilhelm, when a short pause came in the shouting, and in the rain of wreaths and flowers—­“Look what makes the deepest impression on the people, next to the great representative figures.  There is the symbol which you despised.”

“What does that prove?” answered Wilhelm.  “I never doubted that the crowd was roused by appearances, and not by the reason of things.  The ideal results of victory one cannot see with one’s eyes or applaud with one’s hands, but a dismantled banner one can.”

“That does not explain everything.  Atavism comes into it.  The inhabitants of towns in ancient times need to rejoice and cheer in the same way when their victorious troops brought home the tutelary gods of their enemies.  It is the same idea, the same superstition, after an interval of three thousand years.”

“Yes, it is curious.  I was thinking the whole time that one had a picture of ancient civilization before one.  The wreaths of flowers, these swaggering figures with their trophies of war, this gay crowd, distributing food and drink, these young girls with their crowns, is it not all exactly the manner in which the people of the Stone Age or the savages of to-day would feast their heroes?  Cannot one understand in this that at the beginning of civilization war was the highest object in state and society, an opportunity of enrichment by booty, and a festival for youth?  Nowadays we ought to have got far enough to see in war only a weary fulfilling of duty, a barbarous waste of labor, of which we are inwardly ashamed; and we should keep away from this noisy festival as from the execution of a criminal, which may be necessary, but is painful to witness.  The progress from barbarism to civilization is frightfully slow.”

“It is true; we are still carrying ancient barbarism round our necks, and without a great deal of rubbing you will easily find the primitive savage under the skin of our dear contemporaries who are able to construe Latin beautifully.  And these are not the only gloomy thoughts which this spectacle gives me.  Look there! over yonder at the other end of the street they are unveiling a monument to Friedrich Wilhelm III., and the festival of victory is spoiled by homage paid to a despot who during twenty-seven years never redeemed his pledge to give the people a constitution.  I am forty-eight years old, and yet I have not forgotten my youthful ideas.  My generation looked forward to a united as well as to a free Germany, and hoped