The European great powers
of that day were able, unhindered and unpunished, to take for themselves
piece after piece of German territory. In the United States, on the
other hand, it was years before the steadily increasing population
attained to the boundaries set for it by nature.
Our Bismarck was finally able, in the years from 1864 to 1871, to create
a great empire from the many small German States. As he himself often
remarked, however, this was possible only because his policies and
diplomacy rested upon and were supported by a well trained and powerful
army. How the German Empire came into being at that time is well known.
A war was necessary because of the fact that the then so powerful France
did not desire that North and South Germany should unite. She was not
able to prevent this union, was defeated and had to give back to us two
old German provinces which she had stolen from the Germans. The old
Field Marshal von Moltke said not long after the war of 1870-71 that the
Germans would still have to defend Alsace-Lorraine for fifty years more.
Perhaps he little realized how prophetic his words were, but he and
those who followed him, the German Emperors and the German War
Ministers, prepared themselves for this coming defensive struggle and
unremittingly devoted their attention to the German Army.
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