ing hand in
all directions. For only France, while still intact, possessed the
courage to protect other nations from the all-consuming German appetite.

That Germany should have captured the monstrous friendship of a French
Minister for the Christian-slaying Sultan! Can any one possibly find
any absolution, any excuses, for such a deplorable mismanagement of our
material and moral interests in the East?

Gradually, unless something can be done to check these unfortunate
tendencies of our diplomacy, William II will announce that the time has
come for the apotheosis, _a la turque,_ of a Protestant Emperor.

And then, all of a sudden after this gradual preparation, the Catholics
and the Holy Places of the Orthodox will be delivered over to one of
the only forces of Christianity, to that which gives absolution for
murder and protects the slayer of Christians.

Race, nationality, politics, trade, influence and guarantees, all may
be summed up in Oriental countries in a single word: Religion! Must,
then, a government seek to advance the cause of its State religion, not
from religious conviction, but in the spirit which seeks to retain the
privileges and wealth it has acquired and its powers of self-defence?

Our new Minister of Foreign Affairs understands these things--he has
pondered over them long: will he not, therefore, seek and find in the
complexities of Oriental policy the factor of immediate and personal
advantage which is calculated to minister to boundless self-conceit?
He will endeavour quietly to untie the least compact of the knots tied
at Stamboul and Berlin; he will replace them by other knots, tied more
closely by himself. He will display the cleverness of those who make
no effort to be clever, and he will not lack clearness of sight and
precision for the simple reason that he loves his country better than
himself.

July 25, 1898. [8]

The high approval bestowed by Germany upon all the subterfuges of the
diplomacy of Abdul Hamid, the bankruptcy of the European Concert, the
embarrassment in which each one of the Governments that compose this
strange Concert finds itself when confronted with the machiavelism of
the Turk, all these have produced a situation intolerable for those
statesmen who have any regard for the dignity of their country.

Our new Minister of Foreign Affairs, upon coming to the Quai d'Orsay,
felt keenly the humiliation inflicted upon France by the persistent
weakness of our po