The German Constitution

[p. 585]

|585| in regard to the givers and their quantum as to the recipients, subsist separated from the state without any relation to it.

An equally loose connection, or none at all, may occur in our states in regard to customs, way of life, language etc. A small state, Rome in its origin or Athens, could certainly not have subsisted if within its walls Greek, French, German, Russian, Kamchadal, Kirghiz etc. had been spoken in thirty kinds of languages, or if at the same time as many customs had prevailed among its citizens as the customs of the Russian court nobility, of rich burghers, of Cossacks etc., or only as different customs as are present in every great city in the gradations of the estates … [breaks off].

2.

Yet the disadvantageous consequences of the character of [this] part of the army of the Empire would for the most part fall away if only a true army of the Empire could be brought together; and in this the dissolution of Germany into independent states and its ceasing to be a state shows itself most visibly. According to the fundamental laws and according to theory the army of the Empire would be able to be a formidable host, but practice, this mighty principle of German public law, gives quite other results. Admittedly one has seen only too often an enormous number of German soldiers in the field, but in what manner? It goes without saying, not as an army of the Empire, but in internal wars, in the Thirty Years’ War, the Seven Years’ War, in which the forces that should have been used for mutual assistance destroyed themselves and Germany lacerated its own entrails; what is called the German constitution of the state is not only unable to prevent such wars, but they are rather, as will be discussed below, lawful and in accordance with right. All the more insignificant is the German army when the enemy is a foreign power; it then usually consists principally for the most part of the troops of the less powerful lands. The – quintuple – contingents of Austria, Brandenburg, Hesse, Hanover, Saxony, Bavaria and others form small armies in themselves, and united they would make up an army formidable in itself and would cause the clumsiness of the smaller contingents united with them to disappear. But because these great contingents depend on something wholly other than the supreme public power, their cooperation for the

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