Not only is Prussia a military State, it is also a predatory State. All the great Powers of Europe have been in a sense military States. But to them all war has only been a means to an end, and often a means to higher and unselfish ends. The Spaniards were a military nation, but their wars were crusades against the Moor. The Russians have been a military nation, but their wars were crusades against the Turk or wars for the liberation of the Serbians, the Bulgarians, and the Greeks. The French have been a military nation, but they fought for a chivalrous ideal, for adventure, for humanity. Even Napoleon’s wars of conquest were really wars for the establishment of democracy. The Corsican was the champion and the testamentary executor of the French Revolution. The peculiarity of the Prussian State is that it has been from the beginning a predatory State. The Hohenzollerns have ever waged war mainly for spoliation and booty. Not once have they waged war for an ideal or for a principle. The German Kaiser delights to appear in the garb of the medieval knight. He wears three hundred appropriate uniforms. A German wit has said that he wears the uniform of an English Admiral when he visits an aquarium, and that he dons the uniform of an English Field-Marshal when he eats an English plum-pudding. Amongst those three hundred disguises there is none which is more popular in Germany than that of the Modern Lohengrin bestriding the world in glittering armour. The Kaiser lacks the democratic gift of humour, and does not seem to be aware of the incongruity of the Lohengrin masquerade. A Prussian King cannot honestly play the part of a knight in quest of the Holy Grail. Chivalry and Prussianism, the crusading spirit and the predatory spirit, are contradictory terms. The most exalted Order of the Prussian dynast is the Order of the Black Eagle. The Hohenzollerns could not have chosen a more fitting emblem than that of the sinister bird of prey. For they have been pre-eminently the men of prey amongst modern dynasts. Every province of their dominions has been stolen from their neighbours. They secularized and stole the Church property of the Teutonic Order. They stole Silesia from Austria. They acquired Posen by murdering a noble nation. They stole Hanover from its lawful rulers. They stole Schleswig-Holstein from the Danes. They wrested Alsace-Lorraine from the French.