, ready to
pounce, like a highwayman or pirate, on any unprotected person or
property he may come across, regardless of treaty obligations, of
international disaster, or of the dictates of humanity. One day they
announce he is planning the annexation of Holland in order to get a
further set of naval bases, the next that he means to take Belgium to
make a road for his armies into France, a third that he is about to
set at naught the Monroe doctrine and with his Dreadnoughts seize
Brazil. All these things are conceivable and not impossible, but they
are in the very highest degree improbable, and, as yet at least, ought
not to be considered seriously. To sensible and better-informed people
everywhere he is a Prussian king of the best type, a sincere friend of
peace, with a mania for pushing the maxim "_Si vis pacem para bellum_"
to extremes, politically the most influential man in Europe, and, with
all his faults, one of the greatest Germans of his time.

The character of the Emperor, as monarch, is reflected very largely in
the character of the Germany of to-day.

Germany is optimistic, ardently desirous of peace, bent on worthily
maintaining the great place she has won, and deserved to win, among
the nations, and so materially prosperous as to make many Germans
tremble at the thought that the prosperity may be too great to last.
This, however, is not to assert that in Germany everything is _couleur
de rose_. There are not a few things in the Empire's social and
political conditions which are antiquated or promise no good. Noxious
as well as beneficial forces have been introduced into the social life
of the country and are beginning to make themselves felt. German
home-life is ceasing to be the admirable and exemplary thing it was
before the present era of class rivalry, commercialism, the parvenu
and the snob. The idealism which made the Empire a possibility is
passing away. There is need, and a general demand, for franchise
reform in Prussia, and a change in the spirit of Prussian bureaucratic
administration would be acceptable, though it is, perhaps, hopeless to
expect it. The opposition in Germany between the monarchic and the
democratic principle, if not more marked than it was twenty or thirty
years ago, is manifesting itself over a wider and perhaps deeper area.
The relations between capital and labour are far from satisfactory
adjustment. Social democracy is yearly gaining fresh adherents, and if
guilty of no po