design. Nevertheless, they are in William's way and he gets rid of
them, by different means. He needs about him men of a different stamp
to those of the iron age; for the present, he is satisfied with
courtiers, later he will demand valets. All those who are of any
worth, all those who stand erect before his shadow, will be sacrificed
sooner or later. His autocratic methods will end by producing the same
results as those of the most jealous of democracies.

Let us bear in mind how often, under Bismarck and William I, the German
Press made mock of our fatal French mania for change, pointing out to
Europe how the everlasting see-saw of Ministers of War was bound to
reduce our national defences to a position of inferiority. In two
years William is at his fourth!

Soon, no doubt, William II will be able to score a personal success in
the matter of his intrigues against Count Taaffe. His benevolence
spares not his allies. We know the measure of his good-will towards
Italy. Lately, it seems, the Emperor, King of Prussia, said to the
Count of Launay, King Humbert's Ambassador at Berlin, "Do not forget
that, sooner or later, Trieste is destined to become a German port."
And it was doubtless with this generous idea in his mind that he had
his compliments conveyed to M. Crispi for his anti-irridentist speech
at Florence.

That the Triple Alliance is the "safeguard of peace," has become a
catchword that each of the allies repeats with wearisome reiteration.
But there! It is not that William II does not wish for war: it is
Germany which forbids him to seek it. It was not M. Crispi who
declined to seek a pretext for attacking France: it was Italy that
forbade him to find it. It is not the Germanised Austrians who