Wenn ich dann zu Nacht alleine
Dichtend in die Wellen schau’,
Steight beim blanken Mondenscheine
Auf die schmucke Wasserfrau
Aus der Danau,
Aus der schönen, blauen Danau.[1]
Beck
From Ratisbon to Budapest
Berlin to Bagdad! How these words, during the past few years, have stirred the chancelleries of Europe and how they have echoed and reëchoed throughout the civilized world! How they evoke Macchiavellian schemes of rival powers for territorial expansion and recall prolonged diplomatic struggles and countless sanguinary battles for military and commercial supremacy! How they tell of a welter of intrigue, of ambitions foiled, of treaties violated, of nations plunged into the miseries and horrors of the most frightful and most destructive of wars!
No portion of the world’s surface in the entire history of humanity has witnessed so many and so great revolutions as has that narrow strip which connects what was once the palm-embowered capital of Harun-al-Rashid, near the reputed birthplace of our race, with the once proud metropolis of the Hohenzollerns in far distant Niflheim. Across this restricted belt have swept Babylonians and Assyrians, Persians and Greeks, Saracens and Mongols in their careers of rapine and conquest. And across it surged the countless hordes of Huns and Goths, Turks and Tartars, during that protracted migration of nations from the arid steppes of Asia to the fertile plains of Europe. And across it, too, at the head of their victorious armies, forced their way all projectors of world domination from Ashurbanipal and Alexander to Timur and Napoleon.