always with success. She became a political unity and a Great Power in
Europe. And then came her commercial triumph. Riches beyond all
expectation flowed in; and a mercantile class arose in her midst whose
ideals of life were of a corresponding character--the ideals of the
wealthy shopkeeper. What wonder that, feeling her power, feeling herself
more than ever baulked of her rights, she cast her eyes abroad, and
coveted the imperial and commercial supremacy of the world?

In this she had the example of Britain before her. Britain had laid land
to land and market to market over the globe, and showed no particular
scruple in the matter. Why should not Germany do the same? It was true
that Britain always carried the Bible with her--but this was mere
British cant. Britain carried the Bible in her left hand, but in her
right a sword; and when she used the latter she always let the former
drop. Germany could do likewise--but without that odious pretence of
morality, and those crocodile tears over the unfortunates whom she
devoured. It was only a question of Might and Organization and Armament.

So far Germany seems to have had a perfectly good case; and though we in
England might not like her ambitions, we could not reasonably find fault
with motives so perfectly similar to our own. We might, indeed, make a
grievance of the frank brutality displayed in her methods and the
defence of them; but then, she might with equal right object to our
everlasting pretence of "morality," and our concealment of mercenary
and imperial aims under the cloak of virtue and innocence. One really
must confess that it is difficult to say which is the worse.

But if the crystallization of Germany round the Prussian nucleus was for
the time the source of Germany's success, it is a question whether it is
not even now becoming something quite different, and the likely cause of