, Switzerland, and contrived not only to keep Italy
from declaring war against Germany, but to negotiate a treaty for the
protection of German property there. Despite its clumsiness and
arrogance and brutality, German diplomacy is unmatched as an agency
for rousing popular forces in civilized and uncivilized countries into
subversive excitement. It surrounded the Pope of Rome with
philo-German dignitaries, gave him an Austrian as adviser, and
permeated the Vatican with an atmosphere of Kultur which even pious
Catholics of non-Teuton countries avoid as mephitic. It caught the
Sultan and his Young Turks, Anglophile and Francophile, in its toils,
and gave its warm approbation to the massacre of the Armenians. It won
over the young Shah of Persia, who, with great difficulty and only
after strenuous exertions, was kept from going over bodily to the
Turkish camp. It bought the services of the Senussi. It is making
headway with the Negus of Abyssinia. It offered a bribe to Italian
socialists and found work for Italian anarchists, whose
representatives were received in the palace of the Kaiser's Ambassador
in Rome. And--most difficult task of all--it reconciled, at least for
a time, the interests of Bulgaria with those of Greece and Roumania.

German diplomacy has often misread foreign political situations,
mistaken the trend of national opinion and sentiment and failed to
achieve ends which might by dint of mere patience and quiescence have
been readily accomplished. For it has no psychological standard by
which to measure the nobler qualities of a foreign people, however
closely it may have studied their politics, their history and their
vices. Its tests are for the lower grades of human character, and with
these it has indeed achieved extraordinary things.

Thus, with infinite labour the Teuton mind has grappled with the
chaotic welter produced by the European war. But, besides the skilful
handling of great financial and kindred problems, its assiduity in
watching for and readiness to seize opportunities for dealing with the
issues of lesser moment is worth noting, were it only for its value as
a stimulus. One instance occurred in the very first sitting of the
Reichstag after hostilities had begun. The legislature agreed to
introduce a slight reform of the law, dealing with the rights of
children born out of wedlock, of whom there are in Germany 185,000 a
year. The Government assented to the change, which was embodied in a