The progress from
barbarism to civilization is frightfully slow."
"It is true; we are still carrying ancient barbarism round our
necks, and without a great deal of rubbing you will easily find the
primitive savage under the skin of our dear contemporaries who are
able to construe Latin beautifully. And these are not the only
gloomy thoughts which this spectacle gives me. Look there! over
yonder at the other end of the street they are unveiling a monument
to Friedrich Wilhelm III., and the festival of victory is spoiled by
homage paid to a despot who during twenty-seven years never redeemed
his pledge to give the people a constitution. I am forty-eight years
old, and yet I have not forgotten my youthful ideas. My generation
looked forward to a united as well as to a free Germany, and hoped
that unity would not come out of a war, but rather from the freewill
of the German people. It is now with us through other means, but I
fear not better ones. The aristocracy and the Church will assert
themselves again, and the military system will lay its iron hand
over the life of the whole nation. People say already that it is the
officer and not the schoolmaster who has made Germany great. These
changes put my thoughts in a ferment.
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