is a materialist, an opportunist, and mainly trusts to
brute force. The navy is his creation. He brandishes the sword, saying
he loves peace. Napoleon III. used to express his love for peace, yet
brought on the most disastrous war of French history; Nicholas II.
started as the peacemaker of Europe, yet brought about the bloodiest
war in Russian history. "Are the Kaiser's pacific protests as futile,
are his sympathies as shallow, as those of a Napoleon or a Nicholas?"

Dr. Sarolea closes his book thus:

"We can only hope that England, which to-day more than any other
country--more, even, than republican France--represents the ideals of
a pacific and industrial democracy, may never be called upon to assert
her supremacy in armed conflict, and to safeguard those ideals against
a wanton attack on the part of the most formidable and most systematic
military power the world has ever seen."

CHAPTER I

AN AMERICAN PREFACE[3]

[3] Preface written for the American Edition of the
"Anglo-German Problem," published by Putnam.

I.

The book of which a new and popular edition is now presented to the
American public has very little in common with the thousand and one
war publications which are distracting the attention of a bewildered
and satiated reader. It was not compiled in feverish haste since the
war began. It was written years before the war, and represents the
outcome of two decades of study and travel in Germany.

The volume was first published in 1912 to dispel the false sense of
security which was blinding European opinion to the imminent perils
ahead, to warn Britain of the appalling catastrophe towards which all
nations were drifting, and to give an accurate estimate of the forces
which were making for war. I attempted to prove that Germany and not
Britain or France or Russia was the storm-centre of international
politics. I attempted to prove that the differences between Germany
and Britain were not due to substantial grievances, but that those
grievances were purely imaginary; that such catch-phrases as taking
Germany's place in the sun were entirely misleading, and that both
the grievances and the catch-phrases were merely diverting the public
mind from the one real issue at stake, the clash and conflict between
two irreconcilable political creeds--the Imperialism of Great Britain,
granting equal rights to all, based on Free Trade, and aiming at a
federation of self-governing communities; and