The God who made earth’s iron hoard
Scorned to create a slave
Hence, unto man the spear and sword
In his right hand he gave!
Hence him with courage he imbued
Lent wrath to Freedom’s voice—
That death or victory in the feud
Might be his only choice!
¶ “Der Gott, der Eisen wachsen liess,” “Was blasen die Trompeten,” were on all patriotic lips; at this, William III, mightily offended, had Arndt arrested and sent him into retirement for twenty years.
¶ The old man lived to become a great National hero. He died January 29, 1860, aged 91. It is pleasant to record that on his ninetieth birthday Germany united in good wishes for their national poet of the dark hours.
The people built him a monument at the place of his birth, Schoritz, and another at Bonn, where for many years he had been professor of history.
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It is not time, O William, to go to church but to go to war; yet you and your son keep on reading your Gothic Bible.
¶ Now comes the year 1840; William III goes to the tomb of his ancestors, and is succeeded by Fr: William IV, with whom began anew the long battle between the principle of Divine-right of kings and political democracy exercised by the masses. William IV, intensely addicted to Divine-right theories of government, was in the course of a turbulent reign forced to face great political agitators. However, the King had behind his throne, always, that conservative class (found in every country) that clings tenaciously to the past and dreads the future. The watchword of all William’s enemies was “Liberty!” The cry, visionary as it was, served as a rallying point for those who favored some form of French constitutionalism; and while, as a whole, the so-called friends of Liberty were very impracticable, had no definite plan for relief, we find among the political agitators foremost in their discontent many of the brightest minds in Germany, college graduates, professional men, the clergy, and solid middle class merchants. All were zealous for immediate political reforms.
¶ Consider the position of our Fr: William IV. He was a peculiar man, to begin with—and an irresolute man, to end with. He was not built for times of war. Yet he had to face cannon!
Early in life, in impressionable years, through a court blunder, young William had had a tutor, Delbrueck, who poisoned his charge’s mind against the Prussian military and bureaucratic system.