when he inclined toward
the party of the traders and the industrials in his colonial and tariff
policy. This evolution came about 1879. For a while the great Chancellor
was looked upon almost as a traitor.

Nevertheless, his view was just. Balancing the forces on the one hand by
those on the other, ceding protective duties first to one side and then
to the other, offsetting the advantages which he offered to one side by
the prerogatives which he accorded to the other, he finally succeeded in
reconciling them.

From this reconciliation of the two dominant classes has resulted the
extraordinary power of Germany. The bourgeois parties have from time to
time grumbled over the military appropriations, but they have always
voted them. And militarism, which is the support of the aristocracy, has
been placed at the service of capitalistic ambition. By the prestige of
force, awakening hopes here and inspiring fears there, more than once by
the help of manoeuvres of intimidation, it has become an instrument of
economic conquest.

Other combinations, other reciprocal interlacings, have taken place
which have given an exceptional and unique character to contemporary
Germany. It is a case of social psychology of extreme interest. To
describe it would require long detail. The combination of the
aristocratic and military tendency with the industrial and plutocratic
tendency, the tendency of the police spirit, the regularizing spirit of
the Kulturstaat with the individual initiative of the capitalist
_entrepreneur_, methodical habits of administration with the love of
risk characteristic of the speculator, all this constitutes imperialism,
German imperialism, distinct from every other, because to a definite
object, economic conquest, it adds another, less precise, in which the
moral satisfaction dear to aristocracy, the pleasure of dominating, the
love of displaying force, the tendency to prove one's own superiority to
one's self, play a large part.

Economic conquest has become a necessity for Germany. Transformed into
an industrial State, it no longer produces its own food. Since 1885 its
imports have exceeded its exports by 1,353,000,000 marks. Whence did
Germany derive these 1,300,000,000 marks which were needed, good year
and bad, to meet its balance of trade? It owes them to its maritime
commerce and the revenue of its capital invested abroad. Its maritime
commerce then must augment and must triumph over all competition. At