Must we infer from this that the reigning houses are useless, and that the first Emperor would have done well to suppress them, if such had been his will and pleasure, after the victories of 1870? I do not think so. When Bismarck, setting his face against the plea for centralization put forward by the Prussian heir-apparent, succeeded in inducing old King William to adopt his plan of a federal Empire such as exists to-day, he did not foresee, perhaps, that these potentates, although retaining but a shadow of their sovereignty, would be the solid pillars of the monarchical principle in the new Germany. If they had been entirely dispossessed, the Socialist and republican propaganda would have made giant strides wherever the Prussian régime was detested. The peoples of the different States, having been governed in paternal fashion for some centuries by these local dynasties, have for the most part maintained their loyalty to the ruling houses. The Hohenzollerns, in their capacity as Emperors, have not yet struck their roots deep into the country; they are loved only as Kings of Prussia, in their ancestral provinces to the east of the Elbe. It is difficult to believe that the news of the declaration of war was received with delight by all these pseudo-sovereigns, who had not been consulted as to its necessity. For form’s sake, the rulers of Bavaria, Saxony, Würtemberg, and Baden were apprised throughout of the hurried march of events. For some, the war interfered with old, comfortable habits; so long as it lasted, there was no possibility of travels abroad, of visits to watering-places, or even of hunting parties. Almost all were faced with the prospect of family losses. Yet each of them, from discipline or from a thrill of genuine patriotism, thought it his duty to hail the news with enthusiasm. The Kings of Bavaria and Saxony delivered speeches no less warlike than those of the Emperor. All hastened to swim with the stream. It is worth while pointing out, indeed, since some have wrongly held the contrary view, that the war was greeted with no less acclamation in the rest of Germany than in Prussia itself. The earliest demonstrations in Munich were as noisy as those in Berlin. In Dresden, the mob, with at least as much frenzy as the good folk of the Prussian capital, broke the windows of the British legation. This state of feeling shows, in the first place, that in southern Germany, with its placid inhabitants, a section of public opinion (the section that made itself so prominent) had been quite as much perverted, quite as deeply tainted with the pan-Germanic virus, as the corresponding class in northern Germany, who had long been infatuated with the notion of their own military superiority; and, in the second place, that German unity is now considered by all Germans to be an essential condition of their national existence.