To large numbers of people the
Prussian type of character is not a pleasing one, nor Prussian
society an object of unmixed admiration, and there is something
horrible in a whole people's passing their best years learning
how to kill. But we cannot get over the fact that the Prussian
man is likely to furnish, consciously or unconsciously, the model
to other civilized countries, until such time as some other
nation has so successfully imitated him as to produce his like.
Let those who believe, as Mr. Wendell Phillips says that he
believes, that "the best education a man can get is what he gets
in picking up a living," and that universities are humbugs, and
that from the newspapers and lyceum lecture the citizen can
always get as much information on all subjects, human and divine,
as is good for him or the State, take a look at the Prussian
soldier as he marches past in his ill-fitting uniform and his
leather helmet. First of all, we observe that he smokes a great
deal. According to some of us, the "tobacco demon" ought by this
time to have left him a thin, puny, hollow-eyed fellow, with
trembling knees and palpitating heart and listless gait, with
shaking hands and an intense craving for ardent spirits.
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