: An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy (Vol. 2 of 2) Being an essay on the science of domestic policy in free nations. In which are particularly considered population agriculture trade industry money coin interest circulation banks exchange

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Editor: B. O. Flower

THE ARENA.

AUGUST, 1891.

THE UNITY OF GERMANY.

BY MME. BLAZE DE BURY.

"THE IDEA WHENCE SPRANG THE FACT."

Since the Great French Revolution of 1789 and its immediate consequence in the military despotism of Bonaparte, nothing has occurred that has so convulsed the Old World and so altered the conditions of men and things, as the establishment of the United German Empire in 1870. The men of our time are obliged to know how this event came about, or remain in ignorance of all that has happened during the twenty years following it--that is, to ignore their own political status.

Now two records of this enormous change in all our destinies exist; as yet there are but two, and modern men are bound in duty to take cognizance of them. One is the famous "History," written in Germany by Heinrich von Sybel; the other the work of Prof. L?vy Br?hl, published in France. Both must be read.

"History of the Creation of United Germany." 5 vols. Heinrich v. Sybel, Berlin, 1890.

This it was not; but this was at the same time the view it suited the vanity of the French nation to take of it; accordingly, Sybel's theory was rapidly accepted, and French public opinion did its utmost to cause the unity of Germany, as recognized in 1871, to be regarded as an accident, the creation of one man, promoted, for that matter ungrudgingly, to the rank of the "greatest European statesman," but whose work, being that of an individual, and therefore accidental, might quite conceivably be eventually undone. Sybel's theory, being official and Bismarckian, puts forth in truth the French conception, and is, as a matter of fact, the very opposite of the national German one.

The Germans who agreed with Sybel were the men of the old regime, with far less, be it said, of the "cute" chancellor himself, than of Marshal Moltke, the chancellor being far more distant from the materialism of the "Grand Fritz" with his "big battalions" than were the veterans of the drilled and disciplined Prussian army. Bismarck was divided between two creeds: he knew too much psychology to believe solely in the supremacy of pipeclay, but he was at the same time not averse to the creation of a revived German empire by his own genius.

Hence chiefly the confusion; for men's minds were confused,--in France determinedly, and even in Germany, uncertain.

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