Germany wanted room for her wedge. In Central Europe, with foes on either side, she had to hold two land frontiers before she could start her sea wedge. She was the more readily convinced that England had won all she held by war because modern Germany was the product of war. By war Prussia won Schleswig-Holstein; by war Germany won Alsace-Lorraine, and welded the Germanic peoples into a whole. It was only natural that the German public should be loyal to the system that had fathered German success. Thus, England reveres its Wellingtons, Nelsons, Pitts, and maintains the traditions of the regiments which fought for her. Thus, we are loyal to the Constitution of the United States, because it was drafted by the forefathers who made the nation. If it had been drafted in the thirties we should think it more fallible. It is the nature of individuals, of business concerns, of nations, to hold with the methods that laid the foundations of success till some cataclysm shows that they are wrong or antiquated. This reckoning may be sudden loss of his position in a crisis for the individual, bankruptcy for the business concern, war for the nation. One sticks to the doctor who cured him when he was young and perhaps goes to an early grave because that doctor has grown out of date. The old Kaiser, Bismarck, and von Moltke laid the basis of the German system. It was industry, unity, and obedience to superiors, from bottom to top. Under it, if not because of it, Germany became a mighty national entity. Another Kaiser, who had the merit of making the most of his inheritance, with other generals and leaders, brought modern methods to the service of the successful system. A new, up-to-date doctor succeeded the old, with the inherited authority of the old. That aristocratic, exclusive German officer, staring at you, elbowing you if you did not give him right of way in the street, seemed to express insufferable caste to the outsider. But he was a part of the system which had won; and he worked longer hours than the officers of other European armies. Seeming to enjoy enormous privileges, he was really a circumscribed being, subject to all the rigid discipline that he demanded of others, bred and fashioned for war. Wherever I have met foreign military attachés observing other wars, the German was the busiest one, the most persistent and resourceful after information; and he was not acting on his own initiative, but under careful instructions of a staff who knew exactly what it wanted to know. “Germany shall be first!” was his motto; “Germany shall be first!” the motto of all Germans.