nsular. Even those who saw most of Germany's plan saw too much of
England's part in it. They saw it almost wholly as a commercial and
colonial quarrel; and saw its issue under the image of an invasion of
England, which is even now not very probable. This fear of Germany was
indeed a very German fear of Germany. This also conceived the English as
Sea-Germans. It conceived Germany as at war with something like
itself--practical, prosaic, capitalist, competitive Germany, prepared to
cut us up in battle as she cut us out in business. The time of our
larger vision was not yet, when we should realise that Germany was more
deeply at war with things quite unlike herself, things from which we
also had sadly strayed. Then we should remember what we were and see
whence we also had come; and far and high upon that mountain from which
the Crescent was cast down, behold what was everywhere the real enemy of
the Iron Cross--the peasant's cross, which is of wood.

Even our very slight ripples of panic, therefore, were provincial, and
even shallow; and for the most part we were possessed and convinced of
peace. That peace was not a noble one. We had indeed reached one of the
lowest and flattest levels of all our undulating history; and it must be
admitted that the contemptuous calculation with which Germany counted on
our submission and abstention was not altogether unfounded, though it
was, thank God, unfulfilled. The full fruition of our alliances against
freedom had come. The meek acceptance of Kultur in our books and schools
had stiffened what was once a free country with a German formalism and a
German fear. By a queer irony, even the same popular writer who had
already warned us against the Prussians, had sought to preach among the
populace a very Prussian fatalism, pivoted upon the importance of the
charlatan Haeckel. The wrestle of the two great parties had long
slackened into an embrace. The fact was faintly denied, and a pretence
was still made that no pact: existed beyond a common patriotism. But the
pretence failed altogether; for it was evident that the leaders on
either side, so far from leading in divergent directions, were much
closer to each other than to their own followers. The power of these
leaders had enormously increased; but the distance between them had
diminished, or, rather, disappeared. It was said about 1800, in derision
of the Foxite rump, that the Whig Party came down to Parliament in a
four-wheeler. It mig