ours. And there is no reason to question
their good intentions. Indeed, it may safely be asserted that no people
is more consciously well-meaning than the children of the Fatherland. It
is only that, with their archaic preconceptions of what is right and
meritorious, their best intentions spell malevolence when projected into
the civilised world as it stands today. And by no fault of theirs. Nor
is it meant to be intimated that their rate of approach to the accepted
Occidental standard of institutional maturity will be unduly slow or
unduly reluctant, so soon as the pertinent facts of modern life begin
effectively to shape their habits of thought. It is only that, human
nature--and human second nature--being what it always has been, the rate
of approach of the German people to a passably neutral complexion in
matters of international animosity and aggression must necessarily be
slow enough to allow ample time for the renewed preparation of a more
unsparing and redoubtable endeavour on the part of the Imperial
establishment.

What makes this German Imperial establishment redoubtable, beyond
comparison, is the very simple but also very grave combination of
circumstances whereby the German people have acquired the use of the
modern industrial arts in the highest state of efficiency, at the same
time that they have retained unabated the fanatical loyalty of feudal
barbarism.[9] So long, and in so far, as this conjunction of forces
holds there is no outlook for peace except on the elimination of
Germany as a power capable of disturbing the peace.

[Footnote 9: For an extended discussion of this point, see _Imperial
Germany and the Industrial Revolution_, especially ch. v. and vi.]

It may seem invidious to speak so recurrently of the German Imperial
establishment as the sole potential disturber of the peace in Europe.
The reason for so singling out the Empire for this invidious
distinction--of merit or demerit, as one may incline to take it--is that
the facts run that way. There is, of course, other human material, and
no small volume of it in the aggregate, that is of much the same
character, and serviceable for the same purposes as the resources and
man-power of the Empire. But this other material can come effectually
into bearing as a means of disturbance only in so far as it clusters
about the Imperial dynasty and marches under his banners. In so speaking
of the Imperial establishment as the sole enemy of a European pe