The life of Prince Otto von Bismarck Author:Frank Preston Stearns Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III FRANKFORT AND ST. PETERSBURG. Fortunate are the people who are strong and numerous enough to establish national unity. Without this there can b... more »e no lasting independence,and without independence no superior national development. The world is becoming crowded ; nations press against one another, and their population increases so that it everywhere is straining to find an outlet. Those that are not strong enough to maintain themselves in this continual struggle become absorbed by others, and disappear as independent communities. At the same time the spirit of nationality has never been so daring and self-assertive, so that every small branch of the Aryan family is ambitious to attain it. These are the centrifugal and centripetal forces of Europe. The numerous French invasions of Germany from the time of Louis XIV. to that of Napoleon I. had sufficiently developed the need of a closer consolidation of the German states and national interests. Austria, lying most remote from France, was the only German community sufficiently powerful to offer a substantial resistance to the ambition of French rulers; and the interest of the Austrian government in provinces situated on the Rhine was wholly a philanthropic one, an element which cannot safely be counted for much in international affairs. Though the aggrandizement of France was always something of a menace to the Austrian empire, this would not become serious so long as the French confined themselves to the left bank of the Rhine.1 Frederick the Great formed a league with the Protestant German states for their better protection against both France and Austria, but 1 It is only fair to say in justice to the French that, as the Rhine was the ancient boundary of Gaul, they have always felt that they had an immemorial r...« less