Against this advantage Germany had to rely exclusively
upon civil and military education. At first this competition by Germany
took a military complexion, and very rapidly wrought the complete
consolidation of Germany by the Austrian and the French wars. But this
phase presently passed, and after the French campaign of 1870 the purely
economic aspect of the situation developed more strenuously still, so much
so that intelligent observers, among whom Lord Roberts was conspicuous,
perceived quite early in the present century that the heat generated in
the conflict must, probably, soon engender war. Nor could it either
theoretically or practically have been otherwise, for the relations
between the two countries had reached a point where they generated a
friction which caused incandescence automatically. And, moreover, the
inflammable material fit for combustion was, especially in Germany,
present in quantity. From the time of Fichte and Scharnhorst downward to
the end of the century, the whole nation had learned, as a sort of gospel,
that the German education produced a most superior engine of economic
competition, whereas the slack education and frivolous amusements of
English civil and military life alike, had gradually created a society apt
to crumble. And it is only needful for any person who has the curiosity,
to glance at the light literature of the Victorian age, which deals with
the army, to see how dominant a part such an amusement as hunting played
in the life of the younger officers, especially in the fashionable
regiments, to be impressed with the soundness of much of this German
criticism.
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