of Frederick William IV. His diplomacy led to Königgrätz, and the manipulated telegram from Ems turned, as Moltke said, a retreat into a call to battle. And in front of Metz his wisdom kept the Bavarian legions in the field. From his first definite entry into a State career in 1848 to the dismissal of 1887, his deep religion, wisdom, and simplicity of nature are as distinctly Prussian as the glancing ardour of Skobeleff is distinctly Russian. From the Hohenzollern he looked for no gratitude. His loyalty was loyalty to the kingship, not to the individual. He had early studied the career of Strafford, and knew the value of the word of a King. False or true to all men else, he was unwaveringly true to Prussia, which to Bismarck meant being true to himself, true to God. He could not bequeath his secret to those who came after him any more than Leonardo could bequeath his secret to Luini. But the Empire he built up has the elements of endurance. It possesses in the Middle Age common traditions, deep and penetrating, a common language, and the recent memory of a marvellous triumph. Protestantism and the Prussian temper ensure religious freedom to Bavaria. Even in 1870 the old principles of the Seven Years' War, Protestantism and the neo-Romanism of Pius IX, reappear in the opposing ranks at Gravelotte and Sedan. The new Empire, whether it be to Europe a warrant of peace or of war, is at least a bulwark against Ultramontanism. The change in French political life finds its expression in the Russian alliance. Time has atoned for the disasters at the Alma and Inkermann. Would one discover the secret at the close of the century of the alliance of Russia and France, freedom's forlorn hope when the century began? It is contained in the speech of Skobeleff which once startled Europe: "The struggle between the Slav and the Teuton no human power can avert. Even now it is near, and the struggle will be long, terrible, and bloody; but this alone can liberate Russia and the whole Slavonic race from the tyranny of the intruder. No man's home is a home till the German has been expelled, and the rush to the East, the '_Drang nach Osten_' turned back for ever." III THE IDEALS OF A NEW AGE