be an altogether more difficult exploit for a self-respecting man....

Moreover, before Germany can unify to the East she must fight the
Russian, and to unify to the West she must fight the French and perhaps
the English, and she may have to fight a combination of these powers. I
think the military strength of France is enormously underrated. Upon
this matter M. Bloch should be read. Indisputably the French were beaten
in 1870, indisputably they have fallen behind in their long struggle to
maintain themselves equal with the English on the sea, but neither of
these things efface the future of the French. The disasters of 1870 were
probably of the utmost benefit to the altogether too sanguine French
imagination. They cleared the French mind of the delusion that personal
Imperialism is the way to do the desirable thing, a delusion many
Germans (and, it would seem, a few queer Englishmen and still queerer
Americans) entertain. The French have done much to demonstrate the
possibility of a stable military republic. They have disposed of crown
and court, and held themselves in order for thirty good years; they have
dissociated their national life from any form of religious profession;
they have contrived a freedom of thought and writing that, in spite of
much conceit to the contrary, is quite impossible among the
English-speaking peoples. I find no reason to doubt the implication of
M. Bloch that on land to-day the French are relatively far stronger than
they were in 1870, that the evolution of military expedients has been
all in favour of the French character and intelligence, and that even a
single-handed war between France and Germany to-day might have a very
different issue from that former struggle. In such a conflict it will be
Germany, and not France, that will have pawned her strength to the
English-speaking peoples on the high seas. And France will not fight
alone. She will fight for Switzerland or Luxembourg, or the mouth of the
Rhine. She will fight with the gravity of remembered humiliations, with
the whole awakened Slav-race at the back of her antagonist, and very
probably with the support of the English-speaking peoples.

It must be pointed out how strong seems the tendency of the German
Empire to repeat the history of Holland upon a larger scale. While the
Dutch poured out all their strength upon the seas, in a conflict with
the English that at the utmost could give them only trade, they let the
possibilities o