No, I said to myself at this time, the German nation sets no value upon civil liberty; its Protestantism is mere window-dressing; its Reformation, in contradistinction to that of Calvin, was solely the work of its princes (_cujus regio hujus religio_); if there were any logic in events, the Germans ought to be Roman Catholics, whilst we ought to be members of the reformed church and modernists; Catholicism flourishes, and socialism is so successful, in Germany, only because both the one and the other correspond to a general need for regimentation and tutelage, furnishing an equivalent for military discipline to all those who come forth from barrack life. I noted, in fact, that German socialism had nothing in common with our own; that it did not represent the proletariat at all; that it was a sort of sub-bourgeoisie, comfortable, well-off, placid, and lacking that revolutionary fervour which arises from an outraged conscience; that it constituted a bureaucracy, a hierarchy, a church based upon Marxist dogma; and that it owed its unbroken unity to the complete absence of thought and passion among its members. At such times it seemed to me that the Prussian army was precisely suited to the German nation, desirous, not of self-respect, but of material well-being, friendly to that which controlled it, a people loving to be led. Yes, I said, such a nation needs such an army. And how fond the people is of the army. The bourgeois look upon it with fatuous affection. The kinglets of the empire are all eager to Prussianize themselves within the framework of this army; they all long to secure high command for themselves, if possible to become army inspectors, considering that the red band confers as much distinction as their crowns. I even went so far as to tax with duplicity the liberals of the great commercial and manufacturing world, comparing them to some territorial chief, who in outward aspect was pious and good-mannered, but who in an out-of-the-way court of his castle kept a number of hungry bears, prepared to loose them, as a final argument, upon any one who ventured to annoy him. At Dresden I had received a letter from M. Lichtwark, containing the following phrase: “The two finest types of modern man are the English gentleman and the German officer.” It is too plain, I exclaimed, Germany worships her army; Germany worships herself in her army; the army is Germany; the army dominates the entire country, just as the colossal figure of stone which commemorates the iron chancellor dominates with its huge symbolic sword the port of Hamburg and the forest of masts in the Elbe! This doubt concerning the future of my young liberals returned periodically to sadden me. It was like an intermittent fever.