When Sir Francis Bacon wrote his essay on "The True Greatness of
Kingdoms and Estates" he remarked that forts, arsenals, goodly races of
horses, armaments, and the like would all be useless "except the breed
and disposition of the people be stout and warlike." He denied that
money is the sinews of war, giving preference to the sinews of men's
arms, and quoted Solon's remark to Croesus, "Sir, if any other come that
hath better iron than you, he will be master of all this gold"--a truly
Bismarckian proposition. Indeed, Sir Francis Bacon says explicitly "that
the principal point of greatness in any State is to have a race of
military men."
Goethe, reflecting on the wretchedness of the German people as a whole,
found no comfort in the German genius for science, literature, and art,
or only a miserable comfort which "does not make up for the proud
consciousness of belonging to a nation strong, respected, and feared."
Because Germany in his time was weak in the military sense, he could
write: "I have often felt a bitter grief at the thought of the German
people, which is so noble individually, and so wretched as a whole"; and
he longed for the day when the national spirit, kept alive and hopeful,
should be "ready to rise in all its might when the day of glory dawns.
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