If this is so, and the course of recent events tends to confirm a conjecture made soon after my arrival in Germany, then a centralisation that tends to maintain Prussian hegemony in Germany is not in principle objectionable. It remains to be seen whether the Constitution as now recentralised offers opportunities to a recrudescence of Prussianism in the bad sense. The position of Prussia, having four-sevenths of the population, an even larger proportion of the ruling class and of the military caste, also the capital and the civil service, was the main difficulty of the Constitution-makers. The revolutionary solution was at first the partition of Prussia, and it seemed feasible enough. Prussian unity had centred more than that of any other German State in the Crown; and as the Prussian Revolution had three main distinct regions, not very different from the old racial divisions, a division of the State into three seemed as easy as expedient. Dr. Preuss and constitutional jurists of all parties stood in favour of such partition. At the same time, if Prussia were to be partitioned, obviously a rearrangement of the other States might be attempted, so as to give the new German Constitution that uniformity and precision so precious to the German mind. Accordingly, all manner of fancy schemes were put forward by which the Reich was divided geographically, racially, religiously, economically, and even industrially. But all the time the Revolution, that alone could have carried through any such reconstruction, was being thwarted and throttled, so that none of these schemes became practical politics. The revolutionary impetus that the Constitution-makers could use for the realisation of their reconstructive ideals proved far too weak. There were, however, plenty of interested efforts to abolish the anomalies and absurdities of the old dynastic frontiers. Thus Hamburg merchants wished to annex Bremen; Brunswick revolutionaries wished to annex Anhalt; Coburg councils declared their independence of Gotha councils; Waldeck burghers clamoured for release from the tyranny of Pyrmont. But when it came to effecting any such change, in no case was there sufficient support. It would indeed have been easier to redivide Germany on altogether new lines than to partition up and patch together the old States. Dr. Preuss was, at a very early stage, obliged to restrict himself to laying down principles for procedure which should make subsequent rearrangements as easy as possible; and he was eventually obliged to content himself with putting, as he himself said, the least possible obstacle in the way of change.