and exerted on national policy an influence out of all proportion to its
real weight.

The story of the Franco-German dispute is one of national jealousy
carefully fanned for four years by newspaper editors and popular
speakers until a spark sufficed to set Western Europe in a blaze. The
spark was the Hohenzollern candidature, which would have fallen harmless
had not the tinder been prepared since Königgratz by journalists at
Paris and Berlin. The resulting conflagration may justly be described as
due partly to national friction and partly to the supposed interests of
the Napoleonic dynasty, but also to the heat engendered by a
sensational Press.

It is well that one of the chief dangers to the peace of the modern
world should be clearly recognised. The centralisation of governments
and of population may have its advantages; but over against them we must
set grave drawbacks; among those of a political kind the worst are the
growth of nervousness and excitability, and the craving for
sensation--qualities which undoubtedly tend to embitter national
jealousies at all times, and in the last case to drive weak dynasties or
Cabinets on to war. Certainly Bismarck's clever shifts to bring about a
rupture in 1870 would have failed had not the atmosphere both at Paris
and Berlin been charged with electricity[34].

[Footnote 34: Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern died at Berlin on June 8,
1905. He was born in 1835, and in 1861 married the Infanta of Portugal.]