resort to the dictionary. I turn to the _Encyclopaedisches Woerterbuch_
of Muret Sanders. Excuse its quaint German-English.

*Junker* = Young nobleman, younker, lording, country squire, country
gentleman, squirearch. *Junkerberrschaft* = squirearchy, landocracy.
*Junkerleben* = life of a country gentleman, (_figuratively_) a jolly
life. *Junkerpartei* = country party. *Junkerwirtschaft* = doings of the
country party.

Thus we see that the Junker is by no means peculiar to Prussia. We may
claim to produce the article in a perfection that may well make Germany
despair of ever surpassing us in that line. Sir Edward Grey is a Junker
from his topmost hair to the tips of his toes; and Sir Edward is a
charming man, incapable of cutting down even an Opposition front
bencher, or of telling a German he intends to have him shot. Lord Cromer
is a Junker. Mr. Winston Churchill is an odd and not disagreeable
compound of Junker and Yankee: his frank anti-German pugnacity is
enormously more popular than the moral babble (Milton's phrase) of his
sanctimonious colleagues. He is a bumptious and jolly Junker, just as
Lord Curzon is an uppish Junker. I need not string out the list. In
these islands the Junker is literally all over the shop.

It is very difficult for anyone who is not either a Junker or a
successful barrister to get into an English Cabinet, no matter which
party is in power, or to avoid resigning when we strike up the drum. The
Foreign Office is a Junker Club. Our governing classes are
overwhelmingly Junker: all who are not Junkers are riff-raff whose only
claim to their position is the possession of ability of some sort:
mostly ability to make money. And, of course, the Kaiser is a Junker,
though less true-blue than the Crown Prince, and much less autocratic