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Finally the Countess spoke: "Do I understand, then, that you consider the swine the model of the German race?" "Only of the lower classes," said the aged historian, "but not the House of Hohenzollern. We are exalted above the necessities of breeding, for we are divine." Eyes were now turned upon me, for I was the only one of the company not of Hohenzollern blood.
From that moment Prussia held herself in readiness to repel, with the sword, if necessary, any insolence that, in the future, might proceed from her aggressive neighbor, for whose tottering throne war was a necessity. It may be that he dreaded the accession of strength which might eventually accrue to Prussia if the crown of Spain were placed on the head of a Prince of the house of Hohenzollern.
Perhaps there was some reason why our generals should covet possession of the Hohenzollern redoubt, some good military reason beyond the spell of a high-sounding name.
It will be easily understood that the Kaiser was about the most infuriated man in the United Kingdom when the Flying Fishes arrived at Canterbury and the Commander of the squadron described the arrival of the Hohenzollern in the Thames and asked for orders.
But the Princess von Hohenzollern would not trust the children to any one; she had sworn to her friend Josephine to watch over them, never to let them go out of her sight, and she wished to keep her oath until such time as she could restore the children to their mother.
The war was an adventure, it was the German adventure under the Hohenzollern tradition, to dominate the world. It was to be the last of the Conquests. It has failed.
We only think of the Hohenzollern as the political necromancers of modern Europe, as the supreme masters of statecraft. The very name of the Hohenzollern recalls to our minds a race of State-builders. Machiavelli selected the House of Borgia to illustrate the principles of the statecraft of the Renaissance. A modern Machiavelli would have to go to Potsdam to study the philosophy of high politics.
He was the most genuine and the most wicked of pacifists. He did not want any more wars. He had tortured and beggared all his neighbours; but he bore them no malice for it. The immediate cause of that spirited disaster, the intervention of England on behalf of the new Hohenzollern throne, was due, of course, to the national policy of the first William Pitt.
They felt this strongly again amidst the futile monuments of the Hohenzollern Museum, in Berlin, where all the portraits, effigies, personal belongings and memorials of that gifted, eccentric race are gathered and historically disposed.
And let us remember, in extenuation of Prussia, that she has suffered from two things geographical pressure springing from her mid-European situation, and an evil tradition of ruthless conquest perpetuated by her Hohenzollern rulers since the days of the Great Elector, and especially since Frederic the Great.
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