Littell's Living Age/Volume 127/Issue 1646/The Military Future of Germany
THE MILITARY FUTURE OF GERMANY.
BY COL. CHAS. C. CHESNEY.
Those who would understand the exigencies of Berlin politicians, and the anxieties of Berlin strategists, must avoid the error our press has of late very generally fallen into, of treating the question of the future of Germany as though it were something that has to be discussed exclusively between herself and France. The days are altogether past when the "duel of the nations" could mean nothing else than individual struggle between that which was, and that which now is, the new empire in Europe. All arguments and reflections that ignore the fact that there are other great empires, whose policy must seriously influence the statesmen of Germany, rest on too partial a view of the European situation to be worth earnest discussion. Yet the common belief with ourselves and our neighhours is to speak and write just as though the old dualism of western Europe had been, and would continue to be, the sole part of Continental politics that deserves anxious consideration, or that can affect Continental politicians profoundly. It will be the purpose of these pages to show that such views are altogether too limited; and that the solution of any great international problem of our time must be sought far beyond the limits of the often-repeated struggle between France and Germany.
We may illustrate this first by looking a little closely at the history of the crisis that occurred but three months since; when the utter fallacy of the popular belief that ascribed it solely to German fears of growing French strength and improved French organization, will soon become apparent. It was not without reason, certainly, that when the military advisers in Prussia strove last May to force on the war which only Russian intervention stayed, genuine astonishment was expressed by those in France as well as elsewhere, who knew how utterly unfit she was to cope with her old rival, and how impossible of execution the hopes of early revenge attributed to Frenchmen are. This sentiment has naturally not been lessened by the recent discussions on the exact strength of French armaments. And many persons, reasoning from what lies on the surface only, and assuming with truth that facts obvious to a chance observer of things in France cannot possibly be hid from the watchful observance of Berlin, declare their belief that as Count Moltke could have nothing to fear from the French army, the designs imputed to him in May on authority which is hardly controvertible, could never have actually existed. Now the premisses of this argument are all sound enough. France really has not under arms three-fourths of the peace establishment of her warlike neighbour. It is only within the last month that her war-office has taken the first step towards training even the first instalment of the future reserve that is to fill it up to a field army; whilst every German reservist is trained and ready for his place at call. Her territorial army exists solely on paper. Her armament is incomplete. Her supply of stores is utterly inadequate to the exigencies of a great campaign. In short, if forced into the struggle now, she would undoubtedly enter it under far less favourable conditions than those of 1870 as regards her own part: whilst the German forces would not only be strengthened by the prestige of victory, and the advantage of experience on their side, but would be found more complete and fit throughout at every point than was the case five years ago; for to make them so has been the object of unwearied and able administrators, supported by an enthusiastic nation, and supplied with almost unlimited funds. And all this contrast is fully known and carefully studied in the giant bureau on the Thier-Garten, where military science, trained to approach mathematical precision, has concentrated all the material that brain-work can create to make military predominance once gained a constant possession. But when all this is granted, it is none the less an error to assume that there could have been no wish or desire to force France three months since against her will into the unequal contest that should end in her absolute prostration; or to dispute that war would almost certainly have been unscrupulously produced but that Prince Bismarck had but little immediately to gain by it, and Russia much to lose.
Yet those who reason that the thing could not have occurred would speak with justice, if Germany and France were alone of any account in Europe. Their mistake is in forgetting that the new empire which now throws its shadow across the Continent is after all but one of four great powers of the first class, among whom the military supremacy of the world is, and long has been, distributed. They forget above all that although two of these have succumbed to Prussian arms in decisive single combat, there remains one which still believes, or tries to believe herself fully a match for the victor. Stranger than all, those who talk so much of the lessons of Jena, of Stein's and Scharnhorst's skill in breathing new life into the crushed soul of their country, and of the sudden reversal of defeat which followed the address of Frederick William and the song of Arndt, ignore entirely the conditions under which Prussia drew the sword in the war of independence. What would have been but desperate and foolish in her had she stood alone, was hopeful and just in the then state of Europe. Russia was pouring into Poland the heavy legions unwearied with their task of chasing the French eagles westward. English ships lay before each German port ready to cover the entry of English agents bringing English arms and subsidies. Austria, occupying by her central geographical position the whole flank of the future theatre of war, was arming slowly and secretly with the design already formed of striking in and turning the struggle hopelessly against Napoleon, should he prove, as he did prove, unable to strike down the northern allies in his first fierce onset. Even dull Catholic Bavaria, which owed so much of seeming grandeur to France, was already looking forward to the day when she could safely turn her arms against the hated protector of the Rhenish Confederation, and carry its lesser members with her. There is a present fashion, both in and out of Germany, of speaking of Blücher and Gneisenau as leading the Prussians on to victory in 1813. The army which Blücher actually led, and Gneisenau guided, to that terrible overthrow of Macdonald on the Katzbach, which was the presage of his master's greater disaster on the Elster — was in reality very largely composed of Russians, placed under the old German hero no less from sound motives of policy, than out of respect for his genuine fighting power. In brief, it was only as one member of a great alliance that Prussia rose from her humiliation to fresh grandeur — to power in Europe beyond that achieved by Frederick, won by victories that threw even Frederick's into the shade.
Is this a lesson that Frederick's successors are likely to ignore, when men talk of a new Jena, and its teachings, and apply the words to Prussia's ancient enemy? Far from it. Those that weigh the contingencies of European politics as they affect Berlin, and strive to forecast their future turns, are men essentially of historic minds, though gifted with the power of grasping the conditions of the days they live in. Neither Prince Bismarck nor Count Moltke are likely to fall into the vulgar belief that the next serious Continental crisis must inevitably be but a repetition of the last, a duel between Germany and France, with the latter thoroughly overweighted. The very haste lately shown to bring it on in this special shape proved their conviction that it could entail no serious danger to the empire, and that such could come only when France had had time to form a league with others whose object it would be to humble Germany in her turn. France, the possible ally of Germany's new antagonist, not France the present enemy, was the key to that skilful mixture of hectoring with pretended fear which deceived not only other nations, but the sober-minded Germans themselves, the balance of whose reasoning power the intoxication of conquest has unsettled.
This being so, it becomes all important to inquire what are the future possibilities against which German statesmen and strategists feel themselves thus urged to provide, even at the cost of present wrong-doing. The new empire has not a friend in Europe; and no one asserts this more plainly than its own chief organs. Is it forced, therefore, to contemplate the dreadful issue of an indignant Continent rising up against it as one man, as against the Napoleonic empire when once the failure before Moscow turned the tide of its successes? No, indeed. Obxoxious as Germany has made herself in Scandinavia by her cynical contempt for treaties in the matter of Schleswig; feared as she is in Switzerland and in Austria for what the patriots of those countries think her insolent pretensions to the allegiance of all that use her tongue; dreaded in Holland and Belgium for her greed of ports and colonies and commerce; coldly disliked by Russia as the new barrier to all ambitious Muscovite policy that tends westward; it is in France alone, where the iron yoke of subjection entered into men's souls, that she is hated with something like the bitterness of personal loathing which Germans felt towards France in days of old Napoleonic sway. And, besides the difference of sentiment, there is a vast difference, too often overlooked, in the military situation. The central geographical position of Germany, if laying her apparently open to attack from many quarters, and giving her, as her war-office is wont to plead, a vast length of frontier to defend, vaster by far than that of any other country but Austria, is in truth greatly favourable to her as against a general combination. Those lesser powers which at times please themselves with the saying of Count Moltke, that it would take one or two army-corps to look after a single one of them if hostile, would, in truth, if declaring against Germany, be so separated by their supposed antagonist that neither one of them, nor all combined, could possibly affect the course of a fresh struggle. If venturing to draw the sword against her, they would but give occupation to some of the best troops of the second line she is now preparing under her new Landsturm law. And certainly whilst Holland and Denmark keep their proposed army reforms, as is the case up to the present time, wholly in the style of paper project; and Switzerland and Sweden trust to militia; while Belgium shows herself the only one of these lesser powers prepared to sacrifice commercial demands and party aspirations in the smallest degree to military necessities; so long may we be sure that Germany might be at war with one and all to-morrow without deducting a man from the field army with which she would carry on the struggle with more formidable foes.
Italy is the hardest of all the European countries to judge of as effects their general future as a whole. But it is sufficient here to say that her isolated geographical position, her urgent financial necessities, her general need of time to consolidate the national elements divided for many centuries — all make it so extremely improbable that she would be tempted to indulge in a great war for any cause less than that of self-preservation, that she may be left out of our present view. Certainly she cannot affect the present policy of Berlin, nor of those other cabinets with which that of Berlin is chiefly concerned.
Putting France then for the present altogether aside, for the very sufficient reasons already given, reasons which may be said to amount to demonstration, that she cannot hopefully play the leading part in the near military future of Europe, and knows this well enough not to attempt it; we must fix our attention on Austria, or Russia, or both together, as the real cause of German uneasiness, that uneasiness which of late took the alarming form of preparing to crush utterly out of France the power of future combinations with other great States, and so exclude her from the problem of the military future of Germany. If this feeling be genuine and unfeigned, that is, if Germany has really any possible foe she counts menacing to her newly won greatness, that foe cannot be found in France, much less in the smaller independent States. It must be sought, therefore, in the two great empires that border her to the south and east. We will look at each of these a little in detail, to discover, if we can, how far such anxiety may be justified.
The supposed danger can hardly come from Austria. She knows so well her want of that unity against which she would have to contend; her statesmen are so fully aware of the internal difficulties that would arise upon the rear of her armies if a single-handed contest with Germany were forced upon her; her whole political administration is not merely severed into two co-equal jealous parts by that dual system which is the charter of her modern life, but so complex, slow and feeble as compared to that of the German empire; that these facts alone, which are too patent to be ignored at home or abroad, would be sufficient guarantees for her quietude if not absolutely attacked by her formidable neighbour. Above all, eight millions of her motley population, the most intelligent, active, and wealthy of the races that make up Austro-Hungary, would give their sympathies wholly to her foe, if Vienna broke with Berlin to-morrow. Most real would be Austria's danger then, with her Teutonic population absolutely hostile, her Czechs coldly disposed towards the centralizing monarchy, and the Serbs and Croats ready to turn at any time against an administration which is in their eyes the instrument of the oppression of their own races by the Magyar. In fact such a war would be dangerous in any case to the house of Hapsburg, and defeat would seriously imperil its crown. But all this is on the supposition that Austria has or soon will have equal military means to those of Germany for such a conflict. This, however, is very far from being the case, as a brief comparison will show. Of the year's class of young men available for the conscription, which is within a few thousands of the number reckoned on in Germany, she allots to regular training for the three years' service but 95,000, whilst Germany sets apart, including substitutes for possible absentees, 130,000. It follows that those fully qualified and yet passed over in Austria, although enrolled ostensibly in the Landwehr, rather weaken than reinforce that arm of the service; at least according to the modern view of military organization, which makes the militiaman date his efficiency only from the completion of his service in the line. In men, at any rate, it is clear that Austria can as little hope to rival Germany numerically, as to match her inferior races with the hardy peasants of Pomerania and Brandenburg. But men, as all the world has lately learnt by patent examples, do not decide a great war speedily unless sent into the field well organized, and found in every necessary. To prepare and maintain the equipments required for war during years of peace is a duty entailing much of the regular annual military expenditure of great nations: and hence their average outlay, taking prices as nearly equal, affords a rough test of their desire to be ready for the least emergency. Now in proportion to her income, Austria is at present by far the most economical of the great powers of the Continent. For whilst Germany is spending twenty-six per cent of the national receipts on her armaments, France thirty, and Russia no less than thirty-six per cent, Austria is content with an outlay of less than twenty per cent. And this at a time when Germany is known to have relieved her own exchequer of all the direct expenses of fortifications, military railroads, and re-armaments by the use of the French indemnity.
There could be no more patent proof than this hard pecuniary fact, that Austria does not intend to maintain the race for power with her ancient rival by force of arms. She is weaker now, she admits; and each year that sees her numbers of reserve men so much less than those of Germany, and her military administration so much cheaper, must evidently put it more and more out of her power to engage her neighbour on equal terms. Austrians know this, and naturally chafe at it. Indeed, the very figures we are following are taken from an Austrian authority. But what they know and feel so keenly is of course not less known at Berlin. And it follows that it cannot be Austria which is the object of secret national dread in Germany; unless, indeed, her power be viewed as subsidiary to some more dangerous adversary. But this is not to be sought in France at present. An alliance between these two unaided from elsewhere could hardly have terrors just yet for the great power that has humbled each successively; even did their natural antagonism of sentiment and interests allow them to prepare secretly for a common revenge, which the common foe would assuredly anticipate by striking before either was ready.
Hitherto we have been but clearing the ground. It has been our object to show that there is but one power left in Europe which Germany has any cause to fear; that formidable Muscovite empire, in attempting to subdue which at the height of his power, Napoleon spent all his strength in vain, and prepared his own ruin in the strain of the effort. Of course it is easy to protest roundly that Germany may be trusted not to repeat his crimes or his errors. History, however, cannot be
forecast in this easy strain. All that is certain on this subject is, that the great motive powers which make for war — ambition, distrust, dislike, envy of each other's greatness, and clashing interests — are busily astir in both these empires. German officers — a caste more powerful in their land at present than any caste at all has been in any great country for centuries — avow it to be their next duty to the fatherland to chastise the Muscovite pride. On their side, all the better class of Russians, the strictly German party only excepted, never cease to declare, at home and abroad, their strong conviction that the new empire will sooner or later fasten a quarrel on the old. The heir of all the Russias is openly zealous in fostering the national feelings, which include hatred of Prussians and Prussianizing institutions as a cardinal point in their creed. The revolutionary change that has come over war by means of steam and telegraph, has deprived Russia, as wise old Prince Paskievitch pointed out on his death-bed, of that vast strength against the aggressor which her wide territory gave, when each autumn and spring turned her highways into what Napoleon, in despair of using victory by pursuit, termed "her fifth element" of mud. Russia indeed remaining as she is, her standing army little larger numerically than that of her neighbor, and inferiour in every other condition that brings victory, would be an almost certain prey to German attack. But Russia does not intend so to remain. From the peasant to the czar her people all have the conviction that sacrifice and exertion are necessary to give back to their beloved empire the military primacy she claimed under Alexander I. and Nicholas. They are resolved to undergo whatever is necessary for this end. The schemes of reorganization prepared, and now accepted as law, are as vast and far-reaching as the most ambitious Muscovite could possibly desire. They are spurred on, too, by the belief that it is but one old man's uncertain life that preserves the present condition of things, in which personal friendship and certain limited material interests overbear national sentiment and dreams of future supremacy. And it is the full knowledge of these schemes, and of the possible effect of their accomplishment on Germany, which keeps the weary brains at Berlin in a state of tension, and in turn makes Europe, apparently with no just cause, anxious lest her peace should be suddenly and violently broken.
As the military projects of Russia are not only more vast in outline, but more complicated in detail than the organization of any of the powers she would outshine, we shall but sketch them in outline, premising that what we know only in the general, is closely studied and thoroughly understood at Berlin, where knowledge on such heads is drawn from long practice, and quickened in this instance by the instinct of self-preservation. Our particulars, we may here say, come to us mainly through Austrian sources; and in this peculiar part of military science, known as logistics, or the study of the military resources of nations, the war-bureau of Vienna, raised to a high pitch of knowledge under the régime of Baron Kuhn, is secondary only to that over which Count Moltke presides.
The nominal peace strength of the Russian army has been hitherto estimated at about 800,000 men. But it has long been known that for offensive service in Europe large deductions would have to be made from these numbers for such hitherto wholly sedentary troops as the numerous garrison and other local battalions, and of course for the mixed contingents maintained for Asian service, which would be as little available for action on the side of Germany, as is our Punjaub frontier force for an expedition to Spain. An army of 600,000 men with the colours, backed by a dispersed and untrained body of reserve, has been therefore declared by the ablest statisticians of both Berlin and Vienna to be the very utmost that the Muscovite empire could hitherto dispose of for field operations in a European war. For although it was known that each year's contingent drawn, even before the new law of universal service, must yield a large surplus of nominal recruits; yet these were believed to be left undrilled, and mainly registered as generally available for call in war, not being even required to remain in their own districts, but being liable to be summoned to the nearest depot in time of war. Now the essence of the great change lately made in the laws of the empire is not merely to extend military liability to all classes, but to shorten greatly the duration of its length. Instead of the soldier being with the colours from seven to ten years, as before, he is to remain no more than six in any case, the bulk of the line only four, and large portions, under special conditions, for much shorter periods. Recent calculations in a Russian military journal prove that, when the law comes into full working, the yearly contingent taken into the ranks will be just double the old standard, and the number of trained men passed out yearly into the reserve for call to the ranks in war will be at least three-fold what it has ever hitherto been, even when the cadres were kept at the lowest by the premature discharge of men for economy's sake.
It has, of course, naturally occurred to the Russian staff, as one of its chief obstacles, that the cadres hitherto existing, the officers of which are notoriously many of them lacking in the power of instructing others, are not equal to the task of training the whole mass of recruits to be thus suddenly brought in. A great part of this duty is, therefore, to be assigned to the so-called "local" and "garrison" battalions, the whole form and functions of which are to be modified with a view mainly to this end. Their cadres of officers are being enlarged, so that with an addition made on mobilization of reserve officers (whose commissions may be held by mercantile or professional men) each battalion can be at once formed into four, whilst in peace it can act as a training-school. But at the first sound of war, the functions of the two classes mentioned separate. The local battalions, becoming local regiments, are to undertake the whole care of internal order. The garrison battalions, each calling up reserve men to complete it to the strength of a war regiment of four battalions, are to be ready to act as a second line to the field army proper, performing, in fact, very much the same functions as the German Landwehr did so efficiently in France in the late war. It is calculated that the twenty-nine garrison battalions now maintained can thus be made to add nearly one hundred and twenty, at a few weeks' notice, to the effective forces moved to meet the enemy.
Another step of great importance, is to change and enlarge the regimental cadres of the guards and line, so as to provide that each one on moving may leave a depot battalion behind it, which is to be completed and maintained constantly, after mobilization, at a strength of a thousand men, and is specially charged with supplying the losses suffered by the regiment in the field. As there are stated to be one hundred and ninety-nine regiments on the Russian list, the new scheme provides in round numbers two hundred of such battalions, being a further addition to the fighting forces of the nation in time of war; though not intended in this case to imitate the garrison regiments, and take active service in the field as distinct units, but to send their men on in detachments.
But these two new creations will soon be found insufficient to absorb the rapidly growing lists of reserve men. At the end of fifteen years' working of the law, it has been calculated there will be a surplus of at least a quarter of a million soldiers passed through the ranks with varying length of service (in very special cases this may be contracted even to three months) for whom no room is found in active or local depot forces. Provision is therefore made in the scheme for the formation of independent reserve battalions to specially include this surplus; and it is calculated that these, with the other additions already noticed, but exclusive of the local regiments (which are supposed not to move even in case of war), will add a round half million to the regular field army. But as this is itself, on the new footing proposed, placed at the estimated strength of a clear million and a half, it follows that when Russia has carried out her projects to completion, she will be able to summon under arms at the sound of war no less than two millions of effective trained soldiers, besides garrisoning her soil with others for domestic purposes, and adding to them in case of invasion, a Landsturm of very formidable dimensions. Of this last body it must be noticed that the four youngest classes are liable to prolonged service at home in case of war. The force is to occupy a position as to efficiency midway, in theory at least, between the Prussian Landwehr and Landsturm, comprising all reserve men from the fifteenth to the twentieth year of their service, mixed with those who have escaped the training, though declared efficient for it. The statistical calculation is that the four years' classes liable will average 300,000 men each, and with all possible deductions 250,000; so that Russia is deliberately providing a third million of men to be called out as her home defensive army in support of the two millions to be arrayed directly against the enemy. And the law finally provides that all the remaining men of this Opolisheni, or Landsturm, are to be enrolled and armed locally in case of war in such small bodies as may cause least inconvenience. Their numbers, at the end of the first fifteen years, are variously estimated, but by no one at less than two millions; completing the actual armed forces of all kinds, therefore, to a grand total of five millions of men at the least. Now grand totals in military matters are notoriously deceptive. M. Thiers has somewhere gone so far as to assert as the result of his own study of archives, that if no commander-in-chief ever yet credited himself with the full number of men at his disposal, no war-office ever made proper deductions from that it believes itself able to put into the field. In the case of Russia such deductions must be very great. Want of good officers for instruction; want of honest administrative means for working so vast a machine; want of funds and stores at the decisive moment for equipping the reserves, to say nothing of the million and a half of field troops: all these will tend to cut the effective down. Still when every possible allowance is made, no one need be surprised that Russia's neighbour looks anxiously at her plan of reorganization; nor that those who believe most firmly in her pacific intentions discern in the wide outlines of such a scheme the fixed resolution of a mighty nation to place its military power once more on such an unquestioned footing that it shall at least have no cause to be uneasy at that neighbour's triumphs.
Such being Russia's resolve, as shown by council and action, should it make Germany tremble for her security? It is in asking this that we approach the problem we have set ourselves to discuss without pretending to literally solve. And the first answer is that if Russia and Germany alone stood face to face, the latter would neither feel, nor have serious cause to feel, the uneasiness she is reproached with. Her organization is so perfect, that at the word her peace army of 400,000 men may be trebled, including a second line of half a million soldiers, as well trained as the 700,000 that would move before them. The new Landsturm law is able — and is intended, as we have lately learnt — to provide her with 240 additional battalions, formed of men all in the prime of life, and hardly behind the Landwehr in any respect except as to supply of officers. Her war equipment is complete for every emergency beyond any other that empire ever had at command. Her staff is the most highly trained in the world's history; and if the body of officers it controls are not the men of science they are popularly imagined, they are within the strict limit of their profession more efficient than any power has possessed since Rome conquered the world. If she has no leader yet named specially as fit to wear the mantle of the veteran whom age must soon unfit for the duties of the field, the system he will bequeath is so perfect in its working that it can afford to dispense with the aid of specially great genius.
Russia might, therefore, be allowed to complete at leisure her ambitious scheme of military grandeur, and her reconstructed army would still, as we hold certain, if marched to invade her neighbour, march to defeat as decisive as overtook Benedek or Bazaine. Stubborn and strong as the Russian soldiers are, the same want of intelligence in the men, and of good leading in the officers, that sacrificed them in thousands to a handful of French and British troops at Inkerman, would be found fatal to them when opposed to the nimble tactics and skilful handling which, in peace as well as war, are made part of the education of the German army. But slightly superior in gross numbers, and barely equal in physical strength and endurance, the Muscovite would enter on the duel against the Teuton with every other condition of victory against him. It is our conviction that if this struggle came, we should see peace dictated at Moscow on German terms as certainly as we have seen it prescribed at Vienna and Paris. More than this: those who guide German military thought are perfectly conscious of their present superiority, and of the fact that no effort of Russia for a generation to come will suffice to give her, acting unaided, the power to shake it. It is not the vision of grappling with Russia alone that gives to Berlin statesmen and strategists an attitude of uneasiness, reflected in the mind of the nation that is ready to rally round them, and threatening from time to time to turn the armed camp which Europe has become, into the theatre of new campaigns. The real problem of Germany's military future lies in the dangerous contingency of her having to encounter a powerful enemy on either flank; in plain words, to meet the double attack of France and Russia leagued against her.
It is for this dread ordeal the new empire is deliberately preparing. Blind must he be to the military signs of the times who believes that the enormous chain of fortresses along the Rhine and Moselle on which so much of the French indemnity is being spent, is framed with a view to making a fresh entrance into France more easy. The German army if again called on to advance on Paris would literally desire nothing better than a fair field and no favour. Cologne, Mayence, and Strasbourg would no doubt, in such event, prove useful depots for the advancing forces; but they would be quite as useful if left open as though girt with impregnable works. Fortresses, like other strictly defensive means for war, are intended to aid the weaker party, not that which is unquestionably the stronger. And the true use of this mighty barrier can evidently only be found if Germany be unexpectedly called for the time to act strictly on the defensive against a French invasion. But such an invasion could only be hopefully made, such a defensive attitude only be adopted, if the striking-power of Germany be for the time summoned away to meet a great danger elsewhere. This danger lies in the possible simultaneous assault from the east by Russia, whilst France does her share on the Rhine; and it is to ward off such a double attack that the military policy of Berlin is directed. It would be more convenient, much cheaper, and would incur far less material risk to settle conclusively with France now, and so thoroughly reduce her power that Russia could no longer count on her for serious aid. But the instinct of the czar and his people, we may add too the whole sentiment of Europe, were promptly exercised last May, to hinder an act of policy, which, however its true scope and intent was concealed, could only have been carried out by such a stretch of ruthless injustice and violence as would have matched the most violent deeds of Napoleon in the summit of his power. Almost at the last moment those who had counselled the deed seemed to recoil from its execution. The fate of Europe was for the time in the balance, just as in old days when the ambitious Corsican was meditating the ruin of some already weakened neighbour. But Prince Bismarck, happily for the world, though so far yielding to his country's weaknesses as to wear the uniform of a major-general of militia, is at heart never easy when military advisers are most listened to; and there can be little doubt that his voice was finally given in favour of the peace which the czar crossed Europe to insist on. So the danger to France was averted for the while. But this tranquillity allowed her, is of itself no doubt assigned as cause more pressing for urging on to completion the barrier against which her army, even were the field elsewhere open, might spend its strength in vain. Regarded thus, as directed against a double foe — the one enemy to be crushed by active operations, whilst the other is held in check by fortresses and such troops of the second line as the new Landsturm — the military policy of Berlin, which pays such devoted attention to the western frontier of the empire, whilst the eastern is left, as it were, open between Warsaw and Berlin, is simple, explicable, and just. As against France alone, or Russia alone, such care mixed with such seeming carelessness would be worthy of the most shortsighted instead of the profoundest of administrations.
That the double contest thus prepared for will ever come in our day, or what its issue should it come, are questions no prudent man would pretend to give absolute answers to. To forecast the future of politics is notoriously impossible, of war between untried antagonists very difficult. All that it is safe to assert is that, unless thoroughly reformed, as well as largely augmented, the Russian army would be shattered by the Germans: and that the French, however well reorganized, should accomplish the march to Berlin, which would naturally be attempted, could only be possible after long delay before the frontier fortresses, or by passing between them at so great an apparent risk as, strategically speaking, would require the highest military genius to conceive and carry out the plan with any hope of success. The works that are to protect Germany will be completed and armed, and the reserves to fill and cover them be organized, long before the Russian scheme of future military grandeur, and the French dreams of vengeance through reorganization, are carried into practical effect. And then, when each of these three powers has done all it would desire to do, the probabilities of success seem still to lie on the side of the empire which is central in situation, united in heart, and coolly and skilfully prepared for the event. Were we compelled to prophesy, we should not hesitate to say that Germany's chances, viewed thus distantly, seem to weigh down those of her supposed adversaries, who could not possibly rely on the union and promptitude of action with which they would certainly be met.
There is one important contingency remaining to be noticed. We have said nothing in all this of Austria and her slow yet heavy sword. She would probably occupy both in politics, and in the strictly military features of the situation, an attitude marvellously like that she assumed when France, under Napoleon, sixty years since, recovering for the moment from the Moscow disaster, attacked Prussia and Russia united. Once more her army, too serious an instrument to be overlooked, would be gathered — as in 1813, or again in 1853, in the Russo-Turkish struggle for the Danube — on the flank of the combatant powers, ready to come in and turn the scale which way she chose. Does it follow that she would readily join the league formed avowedly to humiliate in turn her own humiliator? Does it follow even that indecision would once more keep her in suspicious neutrality, ready to strike in and complete the ruin of Germany at the first sounds of disaster or even check of those legions that had hitherto known nothing but unbroken success? Far from it, as we believe. Happily for the world's peace, however feared and disliked Germany and her chancellor may be, there is little, as has been already briefly shown, in the sentiment towards them to recall the deadly hatred raised by the first empire. Russia can feel none of this. Austria certainly does not feel it as yet. It would require a repetition of Napoleon's mistakes to raise against Germany's rulers a new war of independence. Happy they, if by avoiding such crimes as that too lightly meditated three months since, they seek the truest protection of the newly-formed empire in such a just and moderate policy as shall find them friends in peace, and take from the unnatural alliance they dread all the reasonable excuse which would sanction and strengthen it with the approval of the world.