Not only did it menace the key of Asia and the whole Eastern dream of German commerce; not only did it offer the picture of one army trained by France and victorious, and another army trained by Germany and beaten.
There was more than the material victory of the Creusot over the Krupp gun.

It was also the victory of the peasant's field over the Krupp factory.

By this time there was in the North German brain an awful inversion of all the legends and heroic lives that the human race has loved.

Prussia _hated_ romance.

Chivalry was not a thing she neglected; it was a thing that tormented her as any bully is tormented by an unanswered challenge.