They assume that free competition will be conceded to us, and do not reflect that our victorious wars have never disturbed our business life, and that the political power regained by war rendered possible the vast progress of our trade and commerce.
Universal military service, too, contributes to the love of peace, for war in these days does not merely affect, as formerly, definite limited circles, but the whole nation suffers alike.

All families and all classes have to pay the same toll of human lives.

Finally comes the effect of that universal conception of peace so characteristic of the times--the idea that war in itself is a sign of barbarism unworthy of an aspiring people, and that the finest blossoms of culture can only unfold in peace.
Under the many-sided influence of such views and aspirations, we seem entirely to have forgotten the teaching which once the old German Empire received with "astonishment and indignation" from Frederick the Great, that "the rights of States can only be asserted by the living power"; that what was won in war can only be kept by war; and that we Germans, cramped as we are by political and geographical conditions, require the greatest efforts to hold and to increase what we have won.

We regard our warlike preparations as an almost insupportable burden, which it is the special duty of the German Reichstag to lighten so far as possible.

We seem to have forgotten that the conscious increase of our armament is not an inevitable evil, but the most necessary precondition of our national health, and the only guarantee of our international prestige.
We are accustomed to regard war as a curse, and refuse to recognize it as the greatest factor in the furtherance of culture and power.
Besides this clamorous need of peace, and in spite of its continued justification, other movements, wishes, and efforts, inarticulate and often unconscious, live in the depths of the soul of the German people.
The agelong dream of the German nation was realized in the political union of the greater part of the German races and in the founding of the German Empire.