In the history of literature and thought it is given to but very few writers thus to become the spokesmen of a whole people. To achieve such importance a writer must possess many qualifications. He must possess a strong and dominating character. He must be a great literary artist. He must be a clear, a bold, and an independent thinker. The following pages will show in how eminent a degree Treitschke possessed all those qualities and how unreservedly they were placed at the service of the Prussian cause. II.—TREITSCHKE’S PERSONALITY. The first quality which challenges attention is the commanding strength of his personality. He combines the most contradictory gifts: the temperament of the artist, the imagination of the poet, the inspiring faith of the idealist, the practical sense of the realist, and the enthusiasm of the apostle. He always impresses you with that magnetic sense of power into which Carlyle impresses his readers. Like Carlyle, he is a firm believer in the heroic, and he has himself the temper of a hero. Three of his volumes of essays bear the significant title, “Deutsche Kämpfe” (“German Battles”). All through his career Treitschke has been fighting his patriotic battles. Obsessed by his ideals, he always has the courage of his convictions, and is always ready to suffer for them. In his early youth he had a painful quarrel with his father, a Saxon General and a loyal servant of the Saxon dynasty, because the son would not refrain from his attacks on Saxon “particularism” and would not abstain from championing the Prussian cause. Treitschke never evades a difficulty. He is never swayed by outside influences. He never dreads contradiction. When facts do not tally with his favourite theories, he brushes them away. And he never accepts any compromise. He is all made of one piece. He has the hardness of granite. He has never been afraid of unpopularity. He has always been a loyal friend and an equally staunch hater. III.—TREITSCHKE AS A WRITER.