The strong
opposition that it has to face is useful, in that it will oblige the
country's rulers to pay more attention to home affairs and to the
nation's interests than to the glorification of the dynasty.
September 28, 1897. [16]
"Germany is the enemy," Skobeleff used to say at Paris in 1882,
speaking to the younger generation of Slavs in the Balkans. These
prophetic words were inspired in the hero of Plevna by Germany's
intrigues at the Berlin Congress, intricate intrigues, full of menace
for the future of the East. They should have haunted the spirit of
every chancellery ever since, and become the formula around and about
which European diplomacy should have organised its forces to resist
Prussia's invading tendencies.
Until 1870 the liberal, philosophic, learned and federalist genius of
Germany, was spreading all over the world through its literature,
science, poetry and music, a genius whose attitude and equilibrium were
the fruit of an equal fusion of the mind of North Germany with that of
the South. By the victories and conquest of 1870, this genius became
suddenly and entirely absorbed in Prussian militarism, and has now
grown to be a force hostile to all other races. The power of the
intellect in all its forms, recognises reciprocity and scientific
research; the power of brute force only recognises the idea of
predominance and the subjection of others. The genius of Prussianised
Germany to-day combines the lust of conquest and power with the
shopkeeping spirit, but even in this last, there is no idea of
reciprocity but only of exclusive encroachment.
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