attempt on the part of England to isolate Germany.[7]

Such an attempt could not be carried out completely and would break down
on its weakest side, which is the East. So that the way lies open to a
League of the Three Kaisers, the Dreikaiserbuendnis which would form a
great island fortress of militarism and reaction amid the surrounding sea
of democracy, able to repress those immense possibilities of progress
within its own walls which would have been liberated by contact with the
vital currents outside.

So long as the War lasts it is the interest of England to strike Germany
and to strike hard. That is here assumed as certain. But when the War
is over, it will no longer be in the interests of England, it will
indeed be directly contrary to those interests, to continue cultivating
hostility, provided, that is, that no rankling wounds are left. The
fatal mistake of Bismarck in annexing Alsace-Lorraine introduced a
poison into the European organism which is working still. But the
Russo-Japanese War produced a more amicable understanding than had
existed before, and the Boer War led to still more intimate
relationships between the belligerents. It may be thought that the
impression in England of German "frightfulness," and in Germany of
English "treachery," may prove ineffaceable. But the Germans have been
considered atrocious and the English perfidious for a long time past,
yet that has not prevented English and Germans fighting side by side at
Waterloo and on many another field; nor has it stood in the way of
German worship of the quintessential Englishman, Shakespeare, nor
English homage to the quintessential German Goethe.

The question of the future relations of England and Germany may,
indeed, be said to lie on a higher plane than that of interest and