The Emperor of Germany possesses a special talent for adding new
complications to a difficult situation, so as to render it impossible of
solution. He has now so completely tangled up the parliamentary skein,
that in a little while it will be impossible for Parliament to govern.
Can one conceive of a majority of the Chamber rallying around the
Catholic centre, or the socialists, for the same reason, increasing in
number at the bye-elections? In such a case William II, equally unable
to surrender in favour of the clericals or to submit to the socialists,
will find himself, as others have been before him, driven to adopt the
ultimate remedy of war.



February 12, 1892. [19]

If the States of Germany, in joining themselves on to Prussia, have
thereby increased in power, they have gained very little in humanity.
The circular, secretly issued by Prince George of Saxony, commanding the
12th Army Corps, reveals something of the brutalities and exquisite
torture which German soldiers have to suffer. This circular was
addressed to the commanders of regiments, and has been published by a
socialist newspaper, the _Vorwärts_. This Prince of Saxony is indignant
at these things, doubtless because he is a Saxon; Bavaria, we are told,
declines to accept the application of the Prussian Military Code. By
common consent, the House of Peers and the Chamber of Deputies at Münich
have voted against subscribing to a condition of things which permits men
to behave like real savages. Military Germany takes pleasure in cruelty,
sentimental Germany is moved by the tortures inflicted on her children.
Brutality and sentiment rub elbows, and are so strangely intermingled
amongst our neighbours that I, for one, abandon all attempts at