"Meanwhile, unfortunately, he gets into silly scrapes." The old gentleman gazed out of the window. Diederich did not dare to show his curiosity.
"Silly scrapes? I can hardly believe it. He always impressed me by his intelligence, even at college; his compositions. And his recent statement to me about the Emperor, that he would really like to be the first labour leader.…"
"God save the workers from that."
"What do you mean?" Diederich was absolutely astounded.
"Because it would do them no good. It has not done the rest of us any good either."
"Yet, it is thanks to the Hohenzollerns that we have a united German Empire."
"We are not united," said old Buck, rising from his chair with unaccustomed haste. "In order to prove our unity we ought to be able to follow our own impulse, but can we? You call yourselves united because the curse of servility is spreading everywhere. That is what Herwegh, a survivor like myself, cried to those who were drunk with victory in the spring of 1870. What would he say now!" Diederich's reply to this voice from another world was to stammer: "Ah, yes, you belong to Forty-Eight."
"My dear young friend, you mean that I have lost and that I am a fool. Yes, we were beaten, because we were foolish enough to believe in the people. We believed that they would achieve for themselves what they now receive from their masters at the cost of liberty. We thought of this nation as powerful, wealthy, full of understanding for its own affairs and consecrated to the future. We did not see that, without political education, of which it has less than any other, it was fated to fall the victim of the powers of the past, after the first flush of freedom. Even in our time there were far too many people who pursued their own personal interests, unconcerned about the common weal, and who were contented when they could fulfil the ignoble needs of a selfish life of pleasure by basking
