dy to correct this untoward
drift of sentiment.

For the German people the government of the present dynastic incumbent
has done all that could (humanly speaking) be expected in the way of
endeavoring to conserve the passing order and to hold the popular
imagination to the received feudalistic ideals of loyal service. And yet
the peoples of the Empire are already caught in the net of that newer
order which they are now endeavoring to break by force of arms. They are
inextricably implicated in the cultural complex of Christendom; and
within this Western culture those peoples to whom it fell to lead the
exodus out of the Egypt of feudalism have come quite naturally to set
the pace in all the larger conformities of civilised life. Within the
confines of Christendom today, for good or ill, whatever usage or
customary rule of conduct falls visibly short of the precedent set by
these cultural pioneers is felt to fall beneath the prescriptive
commonplace level of civilisation. Failure to adopt and make use of
those tried institutional expedients on which these peoples of the
advance guard have set their mark of authentication is today
presumptively a mistake and an advantage foregone; and a people who are
denied the benefit of these latterday ways and means of civic life are
uneasy with a sense of grievance at the hands of their rulers. Besides
which, the fashion in articles of institutional equipage so set by the
authentic pioneers of culture has also come to be mandatory, as a
punctilio of the governmental proprieties; so that no national
establishment which aspires to a decorous appearance in the eyes of the
civilised world can longer afford to be seen without them. The forms at
least must be observed. Hence the "representative" and
pseudo-representative institutions of these dynastic States.

These dynastic States among the rest have partly followed the dictates
of civilised fashion, partly yielded to the, more or less intelligent,
solicitations of their subjects, or the spokesmen of their subjects, and
have installed institutional apparatus of this modern pattern--more in
point of form than of substance, perhaps. Yet in time the adoption of
the forms is likely to have an effect, if changing circumstances favor
their taking effect. Such has on the whole been the experience of those
peoples who have gone before along this trail of political advance. As
instance the growth of discretionary powers under the hands of
parliam