Can you blame Wilhelm for opposing the erection of a Heine monument in Düsseldorf? Those lines were written nearly four scores of years ago, a time sufficient for turning epithets obsolete. No longer is Prussia labeled hypocritical and sanctimonious; it is rather accused of rude frankness and insulting tactlessness. Yet the hatred for Prussia has not abated, but has been greatly enhanced. Heine died before the planting of the atrocious Sieges-Allee, that symbol of the triumphant pig; it is in the last forty years that the world has witnessed the development of Prussian forbearance, narrowness, machine-like preciseness, and soullessness. We have always preferred to distinguish Germany from Prussia; we have found delight in the thought that there is a Munich as well as a Berlin, a Nietzsche as well as a Haeckel, a Rheinhard as well as a Bernhardi.... Today we witness the hegemony of Prussia, a hegemony political as well as spiritual, for the great war has crowned with triumph not only the Krupp guns but also the Prussian idea of efficiency and preciseness. Our amazement at the achievements of the lightning-like army that has been almost invariably victorious during the eleven months of fighting and has held in its iron grip two hostile fronts, and our astonishment at the diabolical accomplishment of the submarines which have driven the English fleet to rest in North Scotland and have become the Flying Dutchmen of the seas, pale before our admiration for the wonderful spirit displayed by the German people within their country. Read their press; you find nothing bombastic or boasting, but calm reserve, set teeth, clenched fists, and deadly determination to fight for life, even if it be a fight against the whole world. “_Weder Schlafpulver noch Tonics!_” admonishes Maximilian Harden against drumming up illusionary hopes. “_Stirb und werde_,” he closes up one of his terse articles in the most virile publication I know of, the _Zukunft_. Bernhardi’s alternative—a World Power or Downfall—is not any longer a mere jingo-rocket but an imperative axiom uniting all Germans in a desperate decision to preserve their national existence in face of a universal hatred and complete isolation. They are not geniuses, those perseverant Teutons; rather are they the reverse of geniuses. They do not rise above reality; they adapt themselves to facts. They refuse to be Quixotic knights; they prefer to emulate Mahomet who went to the mountain when the mountain declined to go unto him; not to ride on the back of conditions and circumstances, but to hold tight their tail and be dragged after them. Herein lies the Teutonic victory, the victory of Blond Beast over Superman, the triumph of mediocrity over uniqueness, of fact over idea, of efficiency over idealism, of state over individual. _The Prophecy of Rimbaud_