Triple Alliance was yet young, the very man in the street, who ran as he read, or did not read at all, was well aware that Russia was the one enemy of all men of good-will, and that honest, modest, Protestant Germany was the mainstay of peace and order on the Continent of Europe. No sooner, however, had Kaiser Wilhelm dispatched his telegram to President Kruger than that same man in the street grew suddenly alive to the alarming fact that, after all, "Short" was the read friend, not "Codlin," and that the only blustering, scheming, and really dangerous power, on the Continent, was and is Germany. Fortunately Prince Bismarck's damaging disclosures followed very quickly on this discovery, and made it furthermore clear, to our unfeigned delight, that the power of that unscrupulous people, for evil or for good, is short-lived; for Germany, distrusted by Austria, abandoned by Italy, hated by France, shunned by England, and thwarted by Russia, now stands forth in conspicuous isolation, as irrevocably doomed as the man who sold his soul to the devil and sealed the compact with his blood. These crude notions may possibly express irrational wishes, but they are certainly not exponents of established facts. The Germany of Goethe and Schiller, of Kant and Schopenhauer, of Weber and Wagner, of Moltke and Von Roon, of Helmholz and Röntgen is not yet diseased to the core, nor can it be expected to drop off as suddenly as Arius the heresiarch just to gladden the hearts of its enemies. The Fatherland is tough yet, like Dickens's "J. B.," "tough and devilish sly," and in no hurry to give up the ghost or the combat. And, considering the extremely useful mission that has fallen to Germany, it would be bad tidings for Europe were it otherwise. In spite of all our withering denunciations of the fair-haired Teuton, in his invidious capacity as underpaid clerk and commercial tactician, he has no serious rival, all the world over, in the earnest pursuit of ideals and the self-denying cultivation of science. In all branches of knowledge, abstract and technical, in every department of science, physical and historical, in studies requiring patient research, genial intuition, and in that mere discrimination that winnows the chaff from the wheat, the sons of the Fatherland are well to the fore. No other people produce such numbers of earnest monks of science, of men who withdrew from the busy world, renounce its pleasures, and give themselves wholly up to scientific research on an income hardly greater than that of Goldsmith's country vicar. In no country of Europe or the world are there so many intellectual giants lost in great cities or buried away in sequesered villages who, whatever else may happen on the globe, are concerned only to keep the lamp of learning eternally alight. Nowhere else is education, elementary, intermediate, and high, what it professes to be: thorough, nicely adjusted to the end in view, sys. tematic, and free. We are wont to sneer at the Germans as slaves in comparison with true Britons who "ever will be free;" and in purely political matters, it must be admitted that we have a decided advantage over them. But startling as the assertion may appear, it is none the less a demonstrable fact that in respect of that higher and highest boon-scientific liberty-the Germans are at least fifty years ahead of us. And to the significance of this fact we are not yet quite alive, though we are painfully picking up ideas on the subject. In the Fatherland, scholars and pedagogues are not forced slavishly to confine themselves to the teaching only of those theories which are found to dovetail with received opinions. They enjoy the priceless right of presenting and propagating the results of their own researches, however rudely they may clash with traditional views, and however rapidly they may threaten to undermine ancient institutions.1 In order to 1 A very interesting case in point occurred in 1888. Herr Harnack, then professor of theology at the little University of Marburg, was invited to fill the same chair in Berlin. But the orthodox party became alarmed and asked that the invitation be withdrawn. The Supreme Ecclesiastical Their best statesmen are practical psychologists; their average ambassadors not only know the language, history, and literature of the countries to which they are accredited, but likewise the commercial advantages which may be obtained for German merchants there. System, order, thoroughness, characterize everything they set their hands to, with the sole exception of colonial enterprise, which needs that clearness of eye and steadiness of hand that only actual experience can confer. gauge the difference in this respect æsthetics. In this country we pride ourselves on being practical; our compass is experience, and our standard of value for all things spiritual or material, its worth in money. As a consequence. fraught with untold evil, our young men are taught, and they themselves aspire to learn, only those things which it is hoped it will pay them to know. Hence, too, we have much cramming for examinations and very little real study for self-culture. In Germany, on the contrary, love of knowledge for its own sake, apart from its practical and profitable utilization, is studiously instilled and successfully communicated to the rising generation, and the result is writ large, among other things, in the vast strides made by German commerce throughout the world. Their country bristles with technical schools, with commercial training colleges, and with special educational institutions for every kind of theoretical learning and practical skill, from the method of dairy farming to the theory of transcendental Council of Prussia claimed to be heard against Harnack, and based their claim on a cabinet order issued by King Friederich Wilhelm IV., to the ef. fect that their opinion should be taken as to the antecedents and orthodoxy of any professor of theology invited to Prussia from a foreign university, Marburg being foreign at the date of the order. Bismarck, to his credit, threatened to resign if Harnack's election were not sanctioned. This settled the matter forever. Is such a state of things conceivable in England? But is not the conduct of their foreign policy another glaring exception? Has not Germany been condemned out of her own mouth of such unheard-of duplicity as warrant English strictures and will render her diplomatic methods a byword among nations for generations to come? Has she not, on her own confession, endeavored to sell Austria to Russia, Russia to Austria, and England to both, and this not so much for the purpose of providing for her own pressing necessities as in pursuance of the dog-in-the-manger policy of hindering France from acquiring friends and allies? Has she not abandoned Italy to her fate after having first contributed to bring about her ruin, and have not her relations with this country consisted of a series of strenuous efforts to coax us to part with some of our colonial possessions, followed by a number of determined attempts to bully us into territorial concessions? Certainly, these assertions have been repeated so often that most people in this country implicitly believe them, and point to them as the origin of our dislike of Germany and the Germans. But to what extent, and within what limitations, are they true? This is a question which should be solved by facts, not by bias, and least of all by the sentimentality which springs from kinship. An attempt to deal with it "objectively," from a purely German point of view, may prove interesting, were it only as a change; especially as political consequences are wholly out of the question. An alliance between Great Britain and Germany was prob ably never so impropable as at present, and if I may say so, never less desirable from a political point of view. A cordial understanding with Russia seems to promise far more solid and more numerous advantages to either country; but whether even this is within the range of practical politics, none but the ministers actually in power can determine. A rapprochement with Germany and the Triple Alliance, which once seemed more than feasible, has been since found to be a wild dream, which the most ardent Teuto-philes among us would certainly not choose the present moment to seek to realize. A purely academic interest, therefore, attaches to the work of picking off and unravelling such threads of method, as, in the light of our present knowledge, can be unwound from the complicated tangle of Germany's international relations. The task is all the more difficult that two wholly distinct and, indeed, opposed systems of foreign policy have been successively followed since the war of 1870; that inaugurated by Bismarck which lasted down to 1890, and the line struck out by his successors which is still on trial. It is not too much to say that the German Empire, founded by Count Bismarck, constitutes a miracle in the political domain to the full as wonderful as the marvel embodied in the existence of Holland is in the physical sphere. But the similarity ceases as soon as the question of their maintenance arises. Holland is shielded from the inroads of the sea by a machinery which, once set up, needs but little expense of labor and none of intelligence to keep it indefinitely going. Germany's national existence, on the contrary, has to be fought for daily and hourly; and every additional year it survives is, in some sort, a new riumph of statecraft, a fresh proof of the rare forethought which leaves practically nothing to chance. To keep the youthful empire from being swallowed up by the ethnographical seas by which she is surrounded or threatened, is a problem outside the range of ordinary diplomacy, and one might as well hope to accom plish the task by the cut-and-dried methods of traditional statesmanship as to keep out the waves from Holland by means of a board containing the arms of the States. Exceptional aims call for exceptional means. With the ethics of the problem, I am not here concerned. It is quite possible, as certain English politicians have recently maintained, that the sacred duty of a patriotic statesman of diplomatic duplicity, is to refuse to save it at all. But I fail to see why any such maxim should be binding in diplomacy and yet devoid of force in war; or why it should be applied to one country and not to another. We are not privileged to have two sets of weights and measures in matters of morals. The late Kaiser Wilhelm, in his first speech from the throne,1 said, and very truly said: "It is not the destiny of Prussia peacefully to enjoy her acquired possessions. It is only by dint of straining to the very utmost her moral and mental energies, by preserving the sincerity of her religious faith intact, by a combination of obedience and liberty, and by the development of her military strength, that she can hope to maintain her position in the world." And, during the thirty-five years that have elapsed since then, Prussia-and the empire which Prussia helped to create— have verified the truth of that prophetic saying. They have gone on increasing their military resources, at the risk of causing a revolution at home; they have thwarted the designs of their false friends and open enemies by a series of measures which may be said to smack of duplicity, but are admitted to have differed from the methods of other nations less in frankness than in foresight and ingenuity. Thus, it was a masterly stroke of diplomacy by means of which Bismarck kept Napoleon from moving during the seven weeks' war in 1866. Yet it would have booted him nothing, had he not followed it up with another piece of cleverness, which is often characterized as sailing close to the wind, and sometimes as downright 2 In the year 1875. deception. Into the Treaty of Prague, which was concluded at the close of that war, France insisted upon the introduction of a clause stipulating that the southern German States should maintain in the future, as in the past, "an international and independent position." This was an insidious move on the part of the emperor of the French, and was treated as such by the Germans. Bismarck consented, and the paragraph was admitted; but he had first taken the precaution to conclude separate offensive and defensive treaties with the Southern States. There was, it is true, nothing of the simplicity of a dove in this scheming and counter-scheming; but since when has diplomacy been marked by simplicity? And which nation has the right to cast the first stone? After having shifted the landmarks of history in 1870, and caused the attractive force of political gravitation to change its centre, Bismarck turned his attention to the maintenance of the new status quo. His incubation of schemes for every conceivable emergency was undoubtedly the shortest on record, his system of national defence the most comprehensive. The policy that resulted was peaceful after the signing of the Treaty of Frankfort, or at any rate after the year 1875. It could not well be otherwise. Germany needed undisturbed leisure to digest and assimilate the annexed provinces, whereas France was eager to strike a blow before her Alsatian friends were changed into German adversaries. Difficulties and dangers beset the statesman on every side; domestic friends combined with foreign enemies, misgivings were insidiously fostered as to the loyalty of certain of the States of the empire; former allies turned aside to sympathize with the vanquished; Austria's attitude may be gauged by the circumstance that her neutrality during the war had to be guaranteed by Russia; England had been ready to join any European attempt to put pressure upon Germany, so as to obtain more favorable terms for France; the bulk of the Italian people sided with Prussia's enemies, Garibaldi having given expression to the feelings of his countrymen when he offered his sword to the provisional government of France. It was under these bewildering conditions that Bismarck was called upon to provide for the future safety of the youthful empire. And he successfully achieved the task. The two cardinal points in his comprehensive scheme were the isolation of France and the maintenance of cordial friendship with Russia. The pursuit of these aims constituted for twenty years the alpha and omega of German statesmanship. Even if there had been no vanquished France, thirsting for revenge, the primary duty of the German statesman at the head of affairs would still seem to be the assiduous cultivation of Russia's good-will; and if there were no formidable Russia on her eastern frontier, it would none the less behove Germany to keep the republic isolated and friendless. In comparison with these two fundamental aims, her relations towards Great Britain, Italy, and the rest of Europe might well seem as mere dust in the balance. Russia is, so to say, the sun in Germany's political solar system, and this for numerous reasons of sentiment and interest which it is needless here to enumerate. Russia and Prussia had been staunch friends for over a century, and some of the most glorious pages of the latter's history would never have been written had the helpfulness of the former been less active or more dilatory. To mention but a few instances that suggest themselves to the minds of every well-informed newspaper reader: Russia was neither indifferent nor inactive when the burning question of occupying Holstein arose; she was benevolently neutral when Prussia defeated and crushed Austria, even though, together with the subjects of the Hapsburgs, several of her own habitual allies had been brought to their knees; she heroically resisted Napoleon's repeated and ingenious attempts to oust Prussia in her friendship, and rejected the bribe offered in the shape of a slice of Turkey to be presented to Greece;1 during the Franco-Prussian a serious menace to Austria, and a bitter war she was not only benevolently disappointment to Russia herself. The neutral herself, but also coerced Austria into absolute neutrality; and finally, on the conclusion of hostilities, she thwarted the movement set on foot, at first by Count Beust, and then by our own Foreign Office, to coax or compel Bismarck to abate his pecuniary and territorial demands. Those are but a few instances of the valuable services which Russia, as a friend and ally, could and did render to her neighbor. The nature of the deadly injuries, which she had it in her power to inflict at critical moments of Prussia's national existence, can be gathered from the history of her negotiations with France and Austria since the beginning of the century. It is clear then that Germany needs the friendship of Russia in the future even much more than in the past, were it on no other grounds than Russia's enormous strength. The czar commands the largest army in the world, the number of his subjects is increasing at a rate unparalleled elsewhere, and his territory is inviolable in virtue of a decree of nature herself. In the customs' tariff, seeing that Russia is a self-sufficing empire, he wields an instrument more deadly and destructive than the quickest-firing guns. The ill-will of such a neighbor would be formidable even to a nation supported by the friendship of alı Europe besides; but to a youthful empire threatened by a vindictive and powerful neighbor in the west, it would be paralyzing in the present and disastrous in the future. Therefore, whatever other friends Germany may win or lose, whatever other advantages she may gain or forfeit, it seems evident that she must follow in the lines laid down by her first chancellor and cultivate Russia's friendship, coûte que coûte, or else pay the penalty. This was not, perhaps, a very difficult matter in 1870. It was much less easy after the Russo-Turkish War, which came as a painful surprise to Germany, 1 The island of Crete was offered as a sort of wedding present to the czar's sister, the queen of Greece. Treaty of Berlin, in which it ended, gave rise to a feeling of great bitterness between the two countries, and the insistance of Germany and Austria on the Russian evacuation of Bulgaria bade fair to break up the friendship of generations. But Germany's need of Russia was so obvious and so pressing that the old Kaiser set out on a pilgrimage to the northern Canossa.2 where he succeeded in convincing the czar of his unchanged feelings of friendship, and in preserving the peace of Europe. The other fundamental aim of Bismarck's policy was to keep France entirely isolated. Her bitter hatred of Germany and her platonic love for democratic institutions sufficiently estranged the Republic from the Autocracy. To prevent her from combining with Austria and Italy other steps were necessary, and the year in which Kaiser Wilhelm I. visited the Czar Alexander II., at Alexandrove, was the birth-year of the Alliance between Austria and Germany, which was afterwards apparenuy strengthened by the adhesion of Italy. By the terms of this treaty the two countries promised to stand by each other in case either was molested by Russia, and to preserve an attitude of benevolent neutrality, should the attack come from any other power. This was the reward received by Germany in return for the energetic support she had given to Austria in holding Russia to the letter of the Treaty of Berlin, and compelling her to withdraw her troops from Bulgaria. Italy, however, was still gravitating towards France, and in spite of her considerable debt of gratitude to Prussia, showed no signs of desire to enter into closer relations with the German Empire. On this, Bismarck, who had left nothing undone to conciliate the Republic, encouraged it to seize upon Tunis, to which Italy con sidered that she alone possessed any serious claims. This move raised an almost impassable barrier between France and Italy, and in 1882 drove the |