defensive

ization of an ever-ready, strength governs all minds that full freedom is given to speech, to criticism, to satire; that the most brazen things may be said with impunity about the King and his Ministers, about the institutions, officials, and about the national character. Not before the highest officer of the empire would the Briton bow the knee.

Young men and women associate in the closest friendship, pass whole days together on the river, without their aunts as chaperons, and not one rough or immodest word disturbs the harmless hilarity; any one who would dare offend the ears of decent women by indecent remarks would thereupon become impossible in that company.

We are only praising what deserves praise. Have the Britons peddler souls? They didn't think of their wares, but exposed them to the gravest possible danger and sacrificed billions in order to destroy Bonaparte, to whose hypnotic will and power they alone-in all Europe, they alone-did not succumb!

There are some in Germany who used to praise all these good qualities of the English. They knew that England has hardy human material, a moral sturdiness which of all nobilities is the most useful for battle, and that she has able women; that England was wise enough to guard against the endemic evils of all democracies and has remained in the twentieth century, as in the Wars of the Roses, an oiligarchy. Those Germans went mad when they read in the newspapers vilification of England, Germans who early and late had admired the noblesse in the lion's eye.

Those were the Germans who could not comprehend how a poor word could be said in behalf of the British Empire and its people, for to them the paramount, natural issue was: Germany must go hand and hand with Britain, must be Britain's friend—always only Britain's. They were not so dangerous as the Briton haters, who, during the Boer war, saw already the empire of the Angles crushed and crumbled, and who glowed with love for the Boers.

Never would England have become

what she is today if all classes had not felt, as Palmerston said, that emotions do not determine the relations between nations.

The individual Briton would be filled with disgust at seeing one of the yellow race at his table. The British Nation jubilated and cheered the Japanese because Japan rendered such good services as an instrument against Russia. And the British Nation cajoles the disgusting Hottentots when the Hottentots can be used to frustrate German plans of colonization.

Shall we Germans never learn the principles of practical politics? Shall we always despise the English because they let others fight their battles for them as long as it is possible; and because they pay for their wars only with gold, not with blood, the noblest treasure of all nations? Shall we always fumble along with abstract legal conceptions and emotions instead of considering only the advantage of our nation?

Whether we love the Russian or despise the Czar along with his whole miserable tribe, we do desire Russia to be our customer and ally. And whether we admire the free and sturdy Briton or sneer at him at times as a Quaker, hypocrite, and cant worshipper, we had to arm ourselves against England's aggressive power.

Germany long looked to England like a blown frog that soon must lose his breath. The German immigrant offered cheaper work than the British engineer, agent, clerk, or waiter. The German immigrant endured worse treatment than the Briton; he hastened on the market to divest himself of his national garb and to adapt himself to Anglo-Saxon ways; wore woolen shirts and could live without a bathtub; reason enough to despise him.

With these creatures, who do not train their bodies, who can't be happy without beer and who as thirty-year-olds sport an embonpoint-with them, so it thought, Germany will not conquer the world. "A nice country-very nice. Dresden, Nuremberg, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Rothenburg; old churches and ancient ruins; and everywhere music, sausage and Munich beer; a nice country in

deed, quite appropriate for a Spring journey! Also a very nice and striving industry which we may well help along with good profit, because they can't compete with us." So thought the Britons.

Long ago the German was not welcome in England, but he came to be respected. And no Englishman thinks of underestimating or even looking down upon Germany. Our industrials and merchants have become dangerous to the British captains of industry. England sometimes had the stronger personalities; Germany always had the stronger organization.

The Prussian lieutenant, the Deutsche Bank, the Allgemeine ElektrizitaetsGesellschaft, the Badische Anilinfabrik and the German Socialists; these most visible fruits of German culture do not grow in Albion's sea climate. The competition soon became worse in that the German worker was content with lower

pay, the technician more thoroughly trained, the German salesman more farsighted.

With the desire of the statesmen to keep this young Continental power in check came the fury of those menaces commercially. The zone of friction had become greater; political intercourse more difficult.

Yet the possibility of a serious conflict seemed far distant. Bismarck, with his dead sure calculation and his majestic common sense, always knew just what he had to hope and what he had to fear from England. If he had had his way England and Germany would have long continued courteously to tolerate one another. The German Empire, he figured, needed a half century to strengthen itself domestically, to secure the new borders in the east and west, and meanwhile it might well play the part of the satiated State; the rest remained to be seen.

The situation was tolerable because the eyesight of Bismarck, who knew the traditions of English policy, was not blinded by illusions and because across the Channel the Whigs and the Tories knew that this Minister would never serve British desires, would never become their pawn.

Britannia quickly learned to hope again

when Bismarck had been sent away. Victoria's son, the son of the Coburger Albert, when a young Prince had scolded his sister, who called herself "half English," and when he had cut his finger in a garrison yard, loudly declared that he hoped upon that occasion to get rid of his last drop of English blood.

But a young gentleman changes his mind sometimes. Also he can be humbugged. After the uncomfortable days of Narwa the Emperor went to London, and the consequence of this trip was the Zanzibar treaty which procured us Heligoland, but threw the chief key to East Africa into England's lap.

Blood is thicker than water. Much was talked of the German-British brotherhood in arms. The aged Empress was caressingly cajoled, and the young Emperor was decorated daily with new wooden wreaths by the English press. For had he not celebrated the British national heroes, Wellington and Kipling? Had not the friendship with Russia already become chilly? On many a holiday the Kaiser put on the English uniform. Never had the union jack waved in a brighter

To

For what is all that necessary? protect the export trade? No Briton believed that. Only for a war agains England does the German Empire need a great war fleet. Is that war being planned? Is that why the Islam world is being so tenderly wooed? Is that why a German Prince is sent to Holland as coast guard? Is that why every imaginable courtesy is being paid to America and to France?

"Without the sanction of the German Emperor no great decision must be made in the future."

None? Not in Asia, either? That, then, was the intention of the treaty?

From the Thames to the Tweed suspicion gnawed along its way. When the Kaiser came to London or to Cowes and donned the tennis coat or the Admiral's gala dress and associated with English naval officers like a good fellow, everything again seemed in good order. But the joy never lasted long. Softly at first, then more audibly, the question was asked whether the British could afford to wait until Germany would be strong enough to pierce their vitals.

That would be the height of stupidity, answered experts like Lee and Fitzgerald. And thus answered with them the entire nation, whose political instinct is imperturable.

friendship, until Germany has taught England fear or until she has proved unmistakably to Great Britain that she does not propose to conquer the territory, which her expansion necessitates, from British ground.

"Pacifist chatter has no effect upon the Britons. Nor has it the slightest effect upon them when we swear that our ships truly and honestly have not been built in order to contend with the island empire for the domination of the seas."

England has no Pitt, or Palmerston, or Disraeli today. England is not governed by the will of the masses, and, as fleets cannot be stamped out of the ground, she can calmly wait until she is still better prepared and has completely recovered from the consequences of the Boer war.

The idea that the English would be deterred by the fear of a Russian army, bravely marching toward India, or let themselves be overrun at the mouth of the Thames, while her Channel ships are manoeuvring in the Baltic, could find room only in the minds of ignoramuses.

Any power that would quickly weaken the British world power would have had to dare the attempt before South Africa was conquered.

Then England was isolated and hated and confused by the difficulty of an undertaking which had been underestimated even by Chamberlain's commercial genius. Since then she has allied herself in Asia with Japan, in Europe with France, and had to expect from Belgium and from the Scandinavian countries at least a favorable neutrality.