104.] [Footnote 3: See Chap.III.p.

95.] Her common nationality leads us to forget that the German Empire should more rightly be called the Prussian Empire.[1] Nor is there any reason at all why the Empire of Prussia should stop its process of expansion at the national boundaries; it has indeed already stepped beyond them, into Poland in the east, into Denmark in the north, into France in the west.

Why should not the process be carried farther still and Germany become in Europe, nay, in the world, what Prussia is in Germany?
By preserving her identity as a State, and by establishing her hegemony, Prussia, in the name of the national idea of Germany, has been able to spread her own ideals throughout the Empire, in other words to undertake that Prussianisation of Germany which is the most striking fact in her history since 1870.

Piedmont was swallowed up in Italy, Germany has been swallowed up in Prussia; she has become the sharer of her victories and the accomplice of her crimes.

And so under the tutelage of the spirit of Bismarck the docile German people have adopted the Prussian faith; and the policy of aggression and conquest once entered upon, there was no drawing back.