where, face to face with the
necessities of existence, knowing what it is to work and to struggle, to
co-operate and to compete, to suffer and to relieve suffering, though they
may be less well-informed than the instructed classes, are also less liable
to obsession by abstractions. They see little, but they see it straight.
And though, being men, with the long animal inheritance of men behind them,
their passions may be roused by any cry of battle, though they are the
fore-ordained dupes of those who direct the policy of nations, yet it is
not their initiative that originates wars. They do not desire conquest,
they do not trouble about "race" or chatter about the "survival of the
fittest." It is their own needs, which are also the vital needs of society,
that preoccupy their thoughts; and it is real goods that direct and inspire
their genuine idealism.

We must, then, disabuse ourselves of the notion so naturally produced by
reading, and especially by reading in time of war, that the German Jingoes
are typical of Germany. They are there, they are a force, they have to be
reckoned with. But exactly how great a force? Exactly how influential on
policy? That is a question which I imagine can only be answered by guesses.
Would the reader, for instance, undertake to estimate the influence during
the last fifteen years on British policy and opinion of the imperialist
minority in this country? No two men, I think, would agree about it. And
few men would agree with themselves from one day or one week to another.
We are reduced to conjecture. But the conjectures of some people are of
more value than those of others, for they are based on a wider converse.
I think it therefore not without importance to recall to the reader the
accounts of the state of opinion in Germany given by well-qualified foreign
observers in the years immediately preceding the war.

[Footnote 1: As I write I come across the following, cited from a book of
songs composed for German combatants under the title "Der deutsche Zorn":--

Wir sind die Meister aller Welt
In allen ernsten Dingen,
* * * * *
Was Man als fremd euch hoechlichst preist
Um eurer Einfalt Willen,
Ist deutschen Ursprungs allermeist,
Und traegt nur fremde Huellen.]

9. _Opinion about Germany_.

After the crisis of Agadir, M. Georges Bourdon visited Germany to make an
inquiry for the _Figaro_ newspaper into the state of opinion there. His