INTRODUCTION BY THE LITERARY EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK "TIMES"

Three years ago there was one man in Europe who had a political sight
so clear that his words then written seem to-day uncanny in their
wisdom.[1]

[1] One of the most eminent American theologians, Bishop
Brent, wrote in an article on "Speculation and Prophecy": "In
Dr. Sarolea's volume, 'The Anglo-German Problem,' published
in 1912, there is a power of precognition so startling that
one can understand a sceptic of the twenty-first century
raising serious doubts as to whether parts of it were not
late interpolation." Mr. Gilbert Keith Chesterton in his
"Crimes of England" applied to the "Anglo-German Problem" the
epithet "almost magical."

This man saw the present war; he saw that Belgium would be invaded by
Germany; he saw that the Germans hated England with a profound and
bitter hate; that German diplomatic blunders had placed that nation in
almost complete isolation in the world; that the Triple Alliance was
really only a Dual Alliance, popular feeling in Italy becoming
increasingly hostile to Austria and to Prussia; that Germans felt
their culture to be superior to the civilization of the rest of the
world, and themselves to be a superior race, with the right to rule
other peoples; that Prussianism and Junkerism and militarism were in
complete control of the German soul; that Germany had ambitions for
world empire, a recurrence of "the old Napoleonic dream"; that the
danger to European peace lay with Germany and not with England; that
Germans believed war to be essentially moral and the mainspring of
national progress; that the whole German people had become
Bismarckian; that the Germans hoped to obtain by a victory over
England that shadowless place in the sun toward which they began to
leap when they beat France in 1870.

The seer who thus saw is Dr. Charles Sarolea, who recently came to the
United States in the interests of his country, one of the most
distinguished of Belgian scholars, a friend of King Albert, holder of
Belgian decorations and honours from British learned societies, for
the last fourteen years Belgian Consul in Edinburgh, and for the last
twenty-one years head of the French and Romance Department at the
University of Edinburgh. His vision was set out in "The Anglo-German
Problem," written in 1912, now published in an authorized American
edition, perhaps the most accurate forecast whi