uch a
frame of mind as leaves them willing to let well enough alone, to live
and let live.

And herein appears to lie the decisive difference between those peoples
whose patriotic affections center about the fortunes of an impersonal
commonwealth and those in whom is superadded a fervent aspiration for
dynastic ascendency. The latter may be counted on to break the peace
when a promising opportunity offers.

The contrast may be illustrated, though not so sharply as might be
desirable, in the different temper shown by the British people in the
Boer war on the one hand, as compared with the popularity of the
French-Prussian war among the German people on the other hand. Both were
aggressive wars, and both were substantially unprovoked. Diplomatically
speaking, of course, sufficient provocation was found in either case, as
how should it not? But in point of substantial provocation and of
material inducement, both were about equally gratuitous. In either case
the war could readily have been avoided without material detriment to
the community and without perceptible lesion to the national honour.
Both were "engineered" on grounds shamelessly manufactured _ad hoc_ by
interested parties; in the one case by a coterie of dynastic statesmen,
in the other by a junta of commercial adventurers and imperialistic
politicians. In neither case had the people any interest of gain or loss
in the quarrel, except as it became a question of national prestige. But
both the German and the British community bore the burden and fought the
campaign to a successful issue for those interested parties who had
precipitated the quarrel. The British people at large, it is true, bore
the burden; which comes near being all that can be said in the way of
popular approval of this war, which political statesmen have since then
rated as one of the most profitable enterprises in which the forces of
the realm have been engaged. On the subject of this successful war the
common man is still inclined to cover his uneasy sense of decency with a
recital of extenuating circumstances. What parallels all this in the
German case is an outbreak of patriotic abandon and an admirable spirit
of unselfish sacrifice in furtherance of the dynastic prestige, an
intoxication of patriotic blare culminating in the triumphant coronation
at Versailles. Nor has the sober afterthought of the past forty-six
years cast a perceptible shadow of doubt across the glorious memory of
that p