Let them consider me a visionary; the future
will, perhaps, prove to them that I was right. Oh, a victory over
Napoleon in Germany would loosen the fetters of all governments,
throw the most determined efforts of many millions of people into
the scales of Great Britain, and deliver us, perhaps forever, from
the monster equally terrible in his strength and in his poison."
[Footnote: Gneisenau's own words.--Vide "Lebensbilder," vol. i., p.
274.]
"And I go to Vienna to influence, together with my friends, the
patriotic impulses of the emperor," said Count Nugent. "I go to
Austria to tell the noble Archdukes John and Charles that they ought
to hold themselves in readiness, and to inform the Tyrolese that the
war of liberation is at hand."
"Baron von Stein has sent me to Germany to enlist there an
intellectual army, and set in motion for Germany not only swords but
pens," said Justus Gruner, smiling. "Stein says the sword will only
do its work when the mind has paved the way for it. The mind and the
free word, these are the generals that must precede the sword, and,
before raising an army of soldiers, we must raise an army of ideas
and minds to take the field. And there can be no better mental
chieftain than noble Baron von Stein. He has placed a worthy
adjutant at his side; I refer to Ernst Moritz Arndt, whom Stein has
called to St.
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