following January all the Fatherland shouted greetings to the grandson
of old Wilhelm the Kaiser. The Gaul and the Teuton have thus agreed to
be happy coincidently; but for very different reasons! The Gaul has
his Republic and the Teuton his Empire. Side by side on the map lie
the two great powers, representing in their history and present aspect
one of the strongest contrasts to be found in human annals.

What the German Empire is we may permit the Emperor himself, in his
recent anniversary address, to explain. His speech shows that Germany,
of all civilized nations, has gone furthest in the direction of
unqualified imperialism. The utterances of Emperor William surpass the
speeches of the Czar himself, in avowing all the pretensions and
fictions of monarchy in the Middle Ages. The Hohenzollern potentate
openly makes the pretence of governing his subjects by rights and
prerogatives in nowise derived from the people, but wholly derived
from himself and his grandfather. Why should Germany be an Empire and
France a Republic? How could such an amazing historical result come
into the world? The French Republic and the new Empire of Germany were
not made by generals and kings and politicians in 1870-71. Indeed,
nothing is made by the strutters who are designated with such titles.
The two great powers having their centres at Berlin and Paris have
their roots as deep down as the subsoil of the ages. They grew out of
antecedents older than the Crusades, older than Charlemagne, older
than Augustus and the Christ. They came by law--even if the result
_has_ surprised the expectation of mankind.

When Cæsar made his conquest of Europe, he found the country north of
the Alps in the possession of two races--both Aryan. These two races
were as unlike then as they are now. The Gauls west of the Rhine were
proper material for the reception of Roman rule; but the Germans