sible that William II may be able to persuade Leo XIII that he
should entrust him with the Holy Places and work together with him in
China. In any event, the Catholics of Germany are now a long way from
the _Kulturkampf_; they will vote the naval budget by an ample majority
and Germany will become the great Naval Power, and at the same time the
great Military Power, so that in the end she may become the wealthiest
of the Commercial Powers: this is the dream of William, King of Prussia!

June 5, 1898. [6]

William II has become attached to the East, the scene of his chief
diplomatic successes, a part of the world in which his Imperial word is
law. He will continue to shower his favours upon it, and disturb
everything there, so as to be able to fish in troubled waters. He will
ransack everything for his purposes, even that very vague thing,
homogeneous Turkey, based on the Mussulman faith. At this moment, he
is planning I know not what kind of acceptance of the Cross by the
Crescent, just as he planned Prince Henry's Chinese crusade. If the
Cuban war did not detain him in Europe, he would have gone to
Palestine, with a cavalcade of some sort which would have been an event
in the history of Christianity. And he will do it yet.

What does Russia, so jealous for the Holy Places, think of the
intrusion into them of the German Kaiser? He is master there. Here is
one of the most striking proofs of the fact: the Mussulmans have a
perfect horror of bells, but the new German Church erected at Jerusalem
is equipped with a fine peal of them. That which neither Christian
kings, nor even Tzars, were able to obtain, William II has achieved.
And such is the idea of force with which the German Emperor is
associated in their minds, that even the most fanatical Mussulmans have
bent the knee in submission to this sacrilege.

July 12, 1898. [7]

The unseverable unity of Pan-Germanism is the ruling formula with the
Germans of Austria. Are they not continually threatening the Hapsburgs
that they will secede if the supremacy of their German minority over
the Slav majority is not maintained? They do not even take the trouble
to lower their voices when they cry to the neighbouring Empire: "Before
very long we shall be yours."

Since the defeat of France, Germany's ambitions have grown to a height
out of all proportion even to the importance of her conquest. On all
sides she has cast covetous eyes, stretched out her grasp