imself never to cross the threshold of the Vatican
alive." When William II is compelled hereafter to make concessions to
the Centre in the Reichstag, his allies, the Italians, will be well
advised to give the matter their attention.

September 26, 1898. [11]

All the actions of that modern Lohengrin, William II, derive their
inspiration from a Wagnerian theory concerning the harmony of discords.
This friend of the Sultan, soon to be the guest of the Khedive,
congratulates Kitchener, the Sirdar, whose deeds are the blood-stained
consecration of England's machinations in Mussulman territory.

Almost at the identical moment that he sent his telegram to the Sirdar
to celebrate a British victory, he said at the opening of the new
harbour at Stettin: "I rejoice that the ancient spirit of Pomerania is
still alive in the present generation, urging it from the land towards
the sea. _Our future lies on the water_."

Queen of the Seas, take warning!

We know how William II is wont to express his pacific ideas and what is
his conception of the reduction of armaments--with blustering threats
and hosannahs in praise of rifles and cannons. On the subject of
peace, the German mind has long since been fixed in its ideas. One
cannot sum them up better than in the following quotation from a Berlin
newspaper.

"At the Paris Salon in 1895 there was a great picture by Danger
entitled 'The Great Authors of Arbitration and Peace,' depicting all
those, from Confucius and Buddha down to the Tzar Alexander III, who
have laboured in the cause of peace. In a note which explained the
painter's work, it was said to be impossible to depict all the friends
of arbitration and peace. It seems to me that such friends of peace as
William II and Prince Bismarck should not have been forgotten, for, by
the Treaty of Frankfort, they have brought about a lasting peace and
have obtained the power required to maintain it."

Between this German conception of peace and ours, is there not a gulf
that nothing can ever bridge?

October 23, 1898. [12]

William II is in the seventh heaven. One by one he dons his shining
garments, which the eastern sun gladdens with silver and gold. He has
made another trip on his swan, that is to say, on the white
_Hohenzollern_, which carries Lohengrin to the four corners of the
earth. The German Emperor's departure from Venice was a master-stroke
of scenic effects, one of those subversions of history, t