rmies to a footing commensurate with the
financial capacities of its people. The external enemy is conquered; we
must not think of conjuring up the internal enemy by laying excessive
burdens on all classes."

"You spoke just now of the unbusiness-like spirit of our foreign policy.
How is this reproach to be understood?"

"Quite literally, Your Royal Highness! The bargain which gave up
Zanzibar to get Heligoland would never have been possible if our
diplomacy had shown the same far-sightedness and intelligence as
the English in economic questions, which I can only designate by the
honourable title of a 'business-like spirit.' This business-like spirit
is the mainspring of industry and agriculture, of trade and handicrafts,
as of all industrial life generally, and it is necessary that this
business-like spirit should also be recognised in our ministries as
the necessary condition for the qualification to judge of the economic
interests of the people. In this respect our statesmen and officials and
our industrial classes can learn more from our vanquished enemy than
in anything else. England owes her greatness to being 'a nation of
shopkeepers,' while our economic development and our external influence
has been hindered more than anything else by the contempt with which the
industrial classes have been treated amongst us up to the most recent
times. In England the merchant has always stood higher in the social
scale than the officer and official. Amongst us he is looked upon almost
as a second-class citizen compared with the other two. What in England
is valued as only a means to an end is regarded by us as an end in
itself. The spirit of that rigid bureaucracy, of which Prince Bismarck
has already complained, is still unfortunately with few exceptions the
prevailing spirit in our Empire, from the highest to the lowest circles;
the lack of appreciation of the importance of economic life is the cause
of the low esteem in which the industrial classes are held. The sound
business-like spirit, which pervades all English state life, cuts the
ground from under the feet of Social Democracy in England, while with us
it is gaining ground year by year. I am convinced that our German people
have no need to fear Social Democracy, for in reforming social cancers
those who govern are of more importance than those who are governed."

"There may be much that is true in what you say, Herr Chancellor. But
the extension of our colonial pos