h the history of
the German nation, with its ruling ideas, and with its apparently
well-tried confidence in the power of its government to achieve its
ends by force, should readily accept such a programme. The date at
which this programme captured the government of Germany, and became the
national policy, can be quite clearly fixed: it was in 1890, when
Bismarck, the 'no colony man,' was driven from power, and the supreme
direction of national affairs fell into the hands of the Emperor
William II. An impressionable, domineering and magniloquent prince,
inflated by the hereditary self-assurance of the Hohenzollerns, and
sharing to the full the modern German belief in German superiority and
in Germany's imperial destiny, William II. became the spokesman and
leader of an almost insanely megalomaniac, but terribly formidable
nation. During the first decade of his government the new ambitions of
Germany were gradually formulated, and became more distinct. They were
not yet very apparent to the rest of the world, in spite of the fact
that they were expounded with vigour and emphasis in a multitude of
pamphlets and books. The world was even ready to believe the Emperor's
assertion that he was the friend of peace: he half believed it himself,
because he would have been very ready to keep the peace if Germany's
'rights' could be attained without war. But many episodes, such as
Kiao-Chau, and the Philippines, and the ceaseless warfare in the German
colonies, and the restless enterprises of Pan-German intrigue, provided
a commentary upon these pretensions which ought to have revealed the
dangerous spirit which was conquering the German people.

It is difficult, in the midst of a war forced upon the world by German
ambition, to take a sane and balanced view of the aims which German
policy was setting before itself during these years of experiment and
preparation. What did average German opinion mean by the phrase
Weltmacht, world-power, which had become one of the commonplaces of its
political discussions? We may safely assume that by the mass of men the
implications of the term were never very clearly analysed; and that, if
they had been analysable, the results of the analysis would have been
widely different in 1890 and in 1914, except for a few fanatics and
extremists. Was the world-power at which Germany was aiming a real
supremacy over the whole world? In a vague way, no doubt, important
bodies of opinion held that such a supr