“But as yet England has not reaped the full consequence of her statesmen’s stupidity. It will come in time, just as it is coming all over Europe. We have been wasted and enfeebled by peace these thirty years past until there is hardly a man in Europe—I except Metternich—with the vision to see beyond the bord as of his own state, to look past the petty trivialities of his own domestic politics, at the dark picture of the continent. They blind themselves to what is happening all about them; they consider only how to safeguard their own miserable little countries, with no thought for the whole. They cannot see, it seems, that unless those who lead and rule Europe stand together for the preservation of order and government, they will be swept away piecemeal on a rising tide of revolution.”

He had worked himself into a mild passion by this time; his eyes were bright and he was crouched forward in his chair, hurling his words down the table at me.

“Well,” says I, “I grant you things are a bit slack, here and there, and my wife has remarked that good servants are getting damned hard to find. But if you think England’s in for revolution you’re well off the mark. We leave that sort of thing to Frogs and niggers.”

“I am not interested in your imbecile observations. I tell you what is, in Europe, and what its consequences must be unless measures are taken to prevent it. Here, in Germany, we have the cancer in a malignant form: the liberal movements are afoot throughout the confederacy. As a member of the Prussian Diet I see them at work openly in Berlin; as a rural landowner I am aware of them even in the countryside. I see them sapping the strength of the German people. If such insidious doctrines have their way, in a loose, undisciplined confederacy such as ours, the result will be chaotic. Germany, and especially German unity, for which far-sighted men have laboured for generations, will receive a mortal blow, from which it might take a century to recover. That she cannot afford. The world is on the move: the great nations are already jockeying for position in the race for power which is sure to move with incredible swiftness, now that science and industry are providing the impetus. If Germany is to take her place among the leaders, she must have unity, she must have strength, she must have discipline”—his great fist smacked the table with each phrase—“she must submit herself to the guidance and government of a supreme authority, who will do for her what Napoleon did for France, what Washington did for America. These were not liberals, Mr Flashman; these were not progressive intellectuals. Germany must have her Napoleon, if she is to have her—”