Treitschke’s penetrating eloquence was heard throughout the land. Editors, preachers of religion, schoolmasters, authors, members of the legislative assemblies, high officials, and even ministers of state came to his class-room and went away to carry his ideas into other channels. He inspired the men who did the actual thinking for the nation. All his efforts were expended for what he considered the enhancement of Germany’s position among nations. In giving him his due we must not overlook his faults. He was narrow in his ideas of international relations. His exaltation of Germany would have left other nations at her mercy. He seems to have had small respect for the principle of live-and-let-live among states. As much as any one in his country he was responsible for the idea that the British are a pack of hypocrites, offering inferior races the Bible with one hand and opium with the other. That they had not a good record with respect to the opium trade is true, but it was sheer narrowness to make it the chief characteristic of a people who have done a great work in behalf of the backward races. Although Treitschke wrote many pamphlets on topics of current interest, all bearing upon what he considered the destiny of Germany, he was preëminently a historian. It was by telling the story of Germany since the revival of national feeling after the battle of Jena that he wished to serve best the generation in which he lived. For him it was the historian to whom was committed the task of making the citizen realize what place he had in the nation’s complex of duties and hopes. He came upon the scene when history had become fixed upon the basis of accuracy and detached research. Men like Leopold von Ranke had insisted that history should deal with the cold exploitation of universal laws. For them Treitschke was a bad historian, and they used their influence to prevent his appointment at the University of Berlin. He was a Chauvinist, undoubtedly, and his _History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century_ is a highly colored picture of what he conceived the reader should know about the history of his country. It is a work written to arouse the enthusiasm of the people for their country, rather than to instruct them in the universal laws of human development; and it would be a sad day for the world if all history were written as he wrote this. But it was a powerful appeal to national pride and energy. It played a great part in the formation of the Germany with which we are concerned in this chapter, the striving, self-confident, and aspiring empire that set for itself the task of dominating the European continent.