The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎581r] (52/239)

AUTOCRACY AND WAR.
21
The German eagle with a Prussian head looks all round the
horizon not so much for something to do that would count for good
in the records of the earth, as simply for something good to get.
He gazes upon the land and upon the sea with the same covetous
steadiness, for he has become of late a maritime eagle, and has
learned to box the compass. He gazes north and south, and
east and west, and is inclined to look intemperately upon the
waters of the Mediterranean when they are blue. The disappear
ance of the Russian phantom has given a foreboding of unwonted
freedom to the Welt-politik. According to the national tendency
this assumption of Imperial impulses would run into the grotesque
were it not for the spikes of the pickelhaubes peeping out grimly
from behind. Germany’s attitude proves that no peace for the
earth can be found in the expansion of material interests which
she seems to have adopted exclusively as her only aim, ideal, and
watchword. For the use of those who gaze half-unbelieving at the
passing away of the Russian phantom, part Ghoul, part Djinn,
part Old Man of the Sea, and wait half-doubting for the birth of a
nation’s soul in this age which knows no miracles, the once famous
saying of poor Gambetta, tribune of the people (who was simple
and believed in the “ immanent justice of things ”) may be adapted
in the shape of a warning that, so far as a future of liberty, concord
and justice is concerned : “ Le Prussianisme—voila Vennemi!”
Joseph Conrad.