Practically all impartial observers of Germany are in agreement with Mr. Harbutt Dawson when he writes as follows:
It is questionable whether unified Germany counts as much to-day as an intellectual and moral agent in the world as when it was little better than a geographical expression.... Germany has at command an apparently inexhaustible reserve of physical and material force, but the real influence and power which it exerts is disproportionately small. The history of civilization is full of proofs that the two things are not synonymous. A nation's mere force is, on ultimate analysis, its sum of brute strength. This force may, indeed, go with intrinsic power, yet such power can never depend permanently on force, and the test is easy to apply.... No one who genuinely admires the best in the German character, and who wishes well to the German people, will seek to minimize the extent of the loss which would appear to have befallen the old national ideals; hence the discontent of the enlightened classes with the political laws under which they live—a discontent often vague and indefinite, the discontent of men who do not know clearly what is wrong or what they want, but feel that a free play is denied them which belongs to the dignity and worth and essence of human personality.
"Is there a German culture to-day?" asks Fuchs.48 "We Germans are able to perfect all works of civilizing power as well as, and indeed better than, the best in other nations. Yet nothing that the heroes of labor execute goes beyond our own border." And the most extraordinary thing is that