the Hohenzollerns, has made more than one attempt to
imitate them, but, owing partly to the opposition of the late Herr
Staaff, and largely to his own mental and moral equipment, which
point in a different direction, he felt obliged to desist.

The accomplished Queen of the Belgians and the Tsaritsa of Russia are
also both German princesses, but they form exceptions to the rule that
whichever of any two spouses is German exercises an overmastering
influence on the other. The Prince Consort of Holland, the Duke of
Mecklenburg, is a German of the Germans, but through constitutional
channels he can wield no political influence, and the attitude of the
Dutch Government towards the Allies has been clear enough to need no
elaborate exegesis.

The King of Bulgaria is an ex-officer of the Austro-Hungarian army,
whose pro-German work and its far-resonant results will probably never
be wholly forgotten by his own German people. For, as we saw, it has
rendered them services that cannot be repaid. Not, indeed, that he had
any coherent plan in his mind's eye, or was guided by any deep-seated
moral principles. Politics were for him the art of the possible
enlarged by the negation of the ethical. Ferdinand may, therefore, be
described as an opportunist, who in current politics contented himself
with following his nose. Of treaties and conventions he had signed a
goodly number and broken some. Thus with Russia he had a secret
agreement of a military nature, and also with Russia's rival,
Austria-Hungary. With Serbia he had one set of stipulations, with
Turkey another, but, shifty customer that he is, he had set himself
above them all and was ever ready to follow the lead of personal
interest. What the historian will accentuate is the deftness with
which German diplomacy, for all its alleged clumsiness, contrived to
use his defects and his qualities alike for the furtherance of its own
designs.

Love of country, like religious faith, is a respectable mainspring of
action. But Ferdinand has been credited with neither. Whithersoever he
moves one looks in vain for the guiding light of large ideas. Deeper
than conscious volition lies the stored-up instinct of barren
pettifogging egotism to which a fine moral atmosphere is deadly.
Insincerity is second nature to him. He once boasted in my presence
that he was a born actor, and it is fair to say that he played his
roles--repellent for the most part--as behoves a mummer. The
astonishing th