Modern Germany is an example of nationalism "gone wrong," just as Napoleon was an example of democratic individualism "gone wrong." The Man of Destiny has been followed by the Nation of Destiny, the "super-man" by the "super-nation." Both have had to face a world in arms arrayed against them.
[Footnote 1: German writers are fond of calling it "Prussia-Germany" (_Preussen-Deutschland_), a phrase of Treitschke's.] Thus the national idea in Germany has been cramped, contorted, and perverted by the Prussian system and the dynastic frontiers.

Had the dreams of 1848 been realised, there might have been no Franco-German War, no Alsace-Lorraine question, no war of 1914.

And what of our third test of nationhood?
Do the people of Germany feel that their government adequately expresses their general will, that it is truly representative, by which is not necessarily meant that it is democratic in form ?[1] There is no doubt that in 1848 the educated classes of Germany did actually desire a democratic form of polity.

In that year Germany was as liberal as Italy; she also had risings in almost every State, not excluding Prussia itself, which were everywhere answered with promises of a "constitution." But when reaction came in Germany, as in Italy, Prussia did not, like Piedmont, stand out for freedom and make itself the model State of Germany; on the contrary she reverted to her old military absolutism at the first opportunity.

And so the dreams of German liberty, like the dreams of complete German unity, disappeared before the stern necessity of accepting the supremacy of a politically reactionary State; and the Prussianisation which followed did much to neutralise altogether the liberalising influences of the south.