Already in 1859 the _Augsburg Gazette_ avowed the object of Germany’s designs on Austria with absolute cynicism: “We loudly declare that if Austria[1] were not a member of the Confederation; if it were not Austria who happened to be the legitimate owner of these non-German regions, it would be the duty of the German nation to conquer them at all costs, because they are absolutely necessary for her development and for her position as a great power.” The future Marshal von Moltke, also inspired by Pangermanism, had written, as far back as 1844: “We hope that Austria will uphold the rights and protect the future of the Danube lands, and that Germany will finally succeed in keeping open the mouth of her great rivers” (see V. Moltke _Schriften_, t. II., p. 313). The author of a pamphlet published in 1895, _i.e._ exactly twenty-one years ago, inspired by this doctrine of fraud and protected by the _Alldeutscher Verband_, the most powerful Pangerman Society, after expounding the main plan of future annexations, concludes with simple effrontery thus: No doubt the newly-constituted Empires will not be peopled merely by Germans, but: “Germans alone will govern; they alone will exercise political rights; they alone will serve in the Army and in the Navy; they alone will have the right to become landowners; thus they will acquire the conviction that, as in the Middle Ages, the Germans are a people of rulers. However, they will condescend so far as to delegate inferior tasks to foreign subjects subservient to Germany” (see _Grossdeutschland und Mitteleuropa um das Jahr_ 1950, published by Thormann und Goetsch, Berlin, p. 48). Identity of race and language served for a long time to justify Pangermanism; but the facts we have shown and the explicit declarations we have quoted prove clearly that race and language were merely a pretext for the diffusion of the Pangerman doctrine inspired by Prussia. If we dissect this doctrine we find it is composed of cupidity both political and economic. The truth is that Pangermanism is a scheme of piracy to be carried on for the benefit of the Prussian monarchy. Its object is, by successive and indefinite expansions of territory to include within the same boundaries, at first economic but afterwards political, such lands and such peoples as are likely to prove a profitable possession to the Hohenzollerns themselves and to their main support, the German aristocracy. To sum up, Pangermanism is a doctrine of international burglary, and therefore it is exactly the reverse of the principle of nationality, that noble idea ushered into the world by the French Revolution. II.