My travels were not long, but were extraordinarily instructive. I made
acquaintance with people from the most widely different countries, with
youthful frankness engaged in conversation with Germans and Frenchmen,
Englishmen and Americans, Poles and Russians, Dutchmen, Belgians and
Swiss, met them as travelling companions, and listened attentively to
what they narrated. They were, moreover, marvellously frank towards the
young man who, with the curiosity of his age, plied them with questions.
Young Dutchmen, studying music in Dresden, gave me some idea of the ill-
will felt in their country towards the Prussians, an ill-will not
unmingled with contempt. On the other hand, I was astonished, during a
half day's excursion on foot with a few Leipzig students, to learn how
strong was the feeling of the unity of Germany and of the necessity of
the supremacy of Prussia, even in the states which in the 1866 war had
been on the side of Austria. The students felt no grief over having been
defeated, the victors were Germans too; everything was all right so long
as the German Empire became one. These and similar conversations, which
finally brought me to the conclusion that the whole of the bourgeoisie
was satisfied with the dominance of Prussia, had for result that in 1870
I did not for a moment share the opinion of the Danes and the French,
that the defeated German states would enter into an alliance with France
against Prussia.
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