ef-makers. The nation's responsible trustees, by
way of justifying this singular attitude, accepted implicitly our
enemy's account of his unfriendly acts and enterprises. Thus it was
the chief of His Majesty's Government who, from his place in the House
of Commons, emphatically asserted that it behoved the British nation
to welcome the Baghdad railway enterprise as a precious cultural
undertaking devoid of political objects and, therefore, well worthy of
our support. In vain the writer of these lines laid bare the real
designs of the German Government, and adduced cogent proofs that the
seemingly cultural scheme was but an integral part of a vast campaign,
of which one object was the ousting of Britons from the Near and
Middle East and the substitution of German overlordship there. They
shut their eyes and stopped their ears, and bade us rejoice that
Britain is not as other countries and can afford to welcome and even
further Germany's "cultural" projects.

It was our party politicians who, when the ground-swell of
international anger and the premonitory rumble of volcanic forces
became audible, diverted public attention from the symptoms and
solemnly assured their countrymen that Germany had no intention of
going to war. To the author of these pages, who was at the pains of
unfolding in private his information and conclusions on this subject
to one of those leaders, the answer given ran thus: "Your intentions
are patriotic and your accuracy of observation is probably scientific.
But your conclusions are wholly erroneous. You must admit that you are
a pessimist. Nor can you deny that we members of the Cabinet dispose
of fuller and more decisive data for a judgment than you, with all
your opportunities, can muster. After all, we do know something of the
temper of the German Government. And we have cogent grounds for
holding that neither the Kaiser nor his Ministers want war. Bethmann
Hollweg is the most pacific chancellor Germany has ever had. And the
German people, bellicose though you think them, are to the full as
peace-loving as our own. Their one desire is to be allowed to vie with
us in commercial and industrial pursuits. So true is this, that if we
suppose the improbable, that the Kaiser's Government should feel
disposed to bring about a European war, that design would be thwarted
by the Reichstag backed by the bulk of the population."

Thus the men who presided over the destinies of the British Empire
either ha