It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that Prussia is not a nation, but a State, and that State is an entirely artificial creation. France and Great Britain are the slow and natural growths of many centuries. They have definite geographical boundaries, their people have common traditions, common ideals, common affinities. The Prussian State is made up of a heterogeneous mosaic of provinces, the spoils of successive invasions. What hold together the artificial fabric of the Prussian State are only the dynasty, the bureaucracy, and the Army. The bureaucracy and the Army are to Prussia what the Civil Service and the British Army are to the Indian Empire. Suppress the British Army and the Civil Service, and British rule ceases to exist. Suppress the Hohenzollern dynasty, the Prussian bureaucracy, and the Junker Army, and the Prussian structure crumbles to pieces. Nature has been niggardly to Prussia. Everything has had to be made with the hands of man. Brandenburg, Pomerania, Western and Eastern Prussia are dreary wastes; Berlin is an oasis of brick and stone amidst a Sahara of sand. The provinces of old Prussia have few industrial resources. The very soil had to be made by intensive agricultural methods. The very population had to be imported. Modern Prussia is neither the gift of Nature nor the outcome of history. It is the triumph of human statecraft. It is the achievement of the “will to power.” When that “will to power” relaxes the Prussian State collapses. VI.—THE PRUSSIAN STATE IS NOT A GERMAN STATE. The modern Holy German Empire is born of the unholy nuptials of the German people with the Prussian State. But the paradox is that the Prussian State, which claims the right to rule the German States, who themselves assert their right to rule over Europe, cannot even pretend to be German. The contrast between the German and the Prussian has often been pointed out.