proposed for election by Destiny to that end, so that, in the free play of forces, the stronger and bolder shall be finally vic¬ torious and shall be entrusted with the task of solving the problem.
The tragic side of it is that these men struggle towards the same objective by different roads, each one genuinely believing in his own mission, considers himself bound to go his own way, in total disregard of the others.
Not infrequently the human race has owed its successes to the lessons learned from the misfortunes of former attempts which have come to grief.
In history we see that the two paths which at one time might possibly have solved the German problem and whose chief representatives and champions were Austria and Prussia, Habsburg and Hohenzollern, ought to have lain together from the first ; all the rest, according to their opinions, ought to have entrusted their combined forces to the one party or the other. Then the path of the champion, who ended by being the worthier, would have been the one to follow ; the Austrian method would never have led on to a German Empire.
Finally that Empire, strong in German unity, arose out of what millions of Germans felt in their hearts to be the most terrible token of all of the conflict between brothers ; for the German Imperial Grown was won in reality on the battlefield of Koniggratz, and not in the fights round Paris, as is commonly asserted. The foundation of the German Empire was not the outcome of any joint desire pursued by joint methods, but as the outcome rather of a deliberate struggle (at times hardly conscious) for hegemony, and out of that struggle Prussia emerged victorious.
It is therefore not to be regretted if a number of men set out to attain the same objective ; it is thus that we recognize the strongest and swiftest and the man who conquers.