ess of a great part of the country,
to the intelligence, energy, and foresight of her people and their
rulers, and to the comparatively backward state of German industry and
commerce up to the year 1870. Far on into the Nineteenth Century,
Germany was suffering from the havoc wrought by the Napoleonic wars and
still earlier struggles. Even after the year 1850, the political
uncertainties of the time prevented her enjoying the prosperity that
then visited England and France. Therefore, only since 1870 (or rather
since 1877-78, when the results of the mad speculation of 1873 began to
wear away) has she entered on the normal development of a modern
industrial State; and he would be an eager partisan who would put down
her prosperity mainly to the credit of the protectionist regime. In
truth, no one can correctly gauge the value of the complex
causes--economic, political, educational, scientific and
engineering--that make for the prosperity of a vast industrial
community. So closely are they intertwined in the nature of things, that
dogmatic arguments laying stress on one of them alone must speedily be
seen to be the merest juggling with facts and figures.

As regards the wider influences exerted by Germany's new protective
policy, we can here allude only to one; and that will be treated more
fully in the chapter dealing with the Partition of Africa. That policy
gave a great stimulus to the colonial movement in Germany, and, through
her, in all European States. As happened in the time of the old
Mercantile System, Powers which limited their trade with their
neighbours, felt an imperious need for absorbing new lands in the
tropics to serve as close preserves for the mother-country. Other
circumstances helped to impel Germany on the path of colonial expansion;
but probably the most important, though the least obvious, was the
recrudescence of that "Mercantilism" which Adam Smith had exploded.
Thus, the triumph of the national principle in and after 1870 was
consolidated by means which tended to segregate the human race in
masses, regarding each other more or less as enemies or rivals, alike in
the spheres of politics, commerce, and colonial expansion.

We may conclude our brief survey of German constructive policy by
glancing at the chief of the experiments which may be classed as akin to
State Socialism.

In 1882 the German Government introduced the Sickness Insurance Bill and
the Accident Insurance Bill, but they were no