Yet, strange to say, the peoples of Germany willingly consented, under the influence of the intoxication of a successful war, to have their independence bartered away to Prussia by their rulers. In this united Germany of Bismarck--a Germany united under Prussian despotism--they naively saw the realization of the dream of their thinkers and poets since the time of the Napoleonic wars--which had become more than ever an inspiration from 1848 onwards--of an ideal unity of all German-speaking peoples as a national whole. It is unquestionable that many of these thinkers and poets would have been horrified at the Prusso-Bismarckian "unity" of "blood and iron," It was not for this, they would have said, that they had laboured and suffered. As a conclusion to the present chapter I venture to give a short summary of the internal, and especially of the economic, development of Prussia since the Franco-German War from an article which appeared in the _English Review_ for December 1914, by Mr. H.M. Hyndman and the present writer:-- "From 1871 onwards Prussianized Germany, by far the best-educated, and industrially and commercially the most progressive, country in Europe, with the enormous advantage of her central position, was, consciously and unconsciously, making ready for her next advance. The policy of a good understanding with Russia, maintained for many years, to such an extent that, in foreign affairs, Berlin and St. Petersburg were almost one city, enabled Germany to feel secure against France, while she was devoting herself to the extension of her rural and urban powers of production. Never at any time did she neglect to keep her army in a posture of offence. All can now see the meaning of this.