After 1871, and even after Sadowa, the problem of interior policy which presented itself was that of the "Prussianization" of Germany. At one time it seemed that Bismarck was on the point of succeeding in it. What was that national liberal party upon which he depended for so long? It was the old liberal party, with advanced tendencies tainted with democratic liberalism and even with cosmopolitanism, keeping up its relations with the intellectuals, the university men, who made so much noise with pen and voice about 1848 and later. They dreamed of the unity of Germany in the democratic liberty and moral hegemony of their nation, having become in Europe the sobered heir of the French Revolution. Under the influence of Bismarck they sacrificed to their dream of unity, to their national dream, their liberal dream, and they secured for the Chancellor the support of the upper bourgeoisie. It was indeed the Prussianization of Germany, but in that spirit and in that system contemporary German militarism would never have fructified. It was contrary to the characteristic tendencies of a monarchical State supported by a conservative caste, which was also particularist, military, and agricultural. A State of this kind tends to become a closed State. What then happened? An event of capital importance which everybody knows, but of which we only now begin to see the consequences. It was the radical transformation of Germany from an agricultural to an industrial nation. In its origin this phenomenon dates from before the nineteenth century. By 1848 it had become perceptible. Since 1866, and especially since 1871, it has dominated the entire social evolution of the empire. Here, in fact, is the revolution. It partakes of the character of a tragedy, it has overturned the conditions of life throughout the entire German territory. At the close of the War of Independence, four out of five Germans lived on the land, two out of three were engaged in agriculture. By 1895 the agricultural population was only 35.7 per cent. That, supported by industry and commerce, kept continually increasing. In 1895 it was 50.6 per cent. This progress of industry and trade indicates the rise of a new class of the population, that of the capitalists. It seemed at first that their arrival would result in a dispossession of the nobility. For example, under the ancien régime the bourgeois could not acquire the property of the nobles. Toward 1880, for Eastern Prussia only, 7,086 estates of 11,065 belonged to non-nobles. They could have been acquired only with money. Capital was supplanting birth. Today even, in Prussia, five members of the Ministry, a little more than one-third, are bourgeois not enjoying the particle von.