a number of crucial points, the right of the Catholic hierarchy of interfering in many administrative state matters, in "mixed" and civil marriages and in the intimate supervision by bishops of the family life of their flocks. High tension prevailed for years; under the surface a religious war was waged in every town and hamlet. Several unyielding archbishops in Prussia were incarcerated. Bismarck, in one of his embittered moods, declared in a Reichstag speech that he was firmly bent on upholding the supremacy of the state, and that he should never "go to Canossa" (a historical reminiscence of the time of Emperor Henry IV). But in the end, after the lapse of six implacable years, he yielded nevertheless in a measure to papal diplomacy, and a compromise with the Vatican was effected, Leo XIII meanwhile having succeeded Pius IX. In part this was due to a new and just as formidable internal foe having loomed up, requiring all the strategical ruthlessness of the dreaded Chancellor; namely, the Socialists. Against their passionate agitation Bismarck got the Reichstag to enact the so-called Ausnahmegesetze (or exceptional laws), which put millions of Germans, both men and women, under the ban. These drastic laws, too, were passed for a specified term of years. They drove many thousands of Germany's skilled artisans, small tradesmen, etc., Socialists by faith, into neighboring and less autocratically administered countries, and also to the United States, where most of them became good and useful citizens. The entire Socialist press was suppressed throughout Germany, but a vigorous contraband trade in Socialist literature was, just the same, carried on constantly, especially across the Swiss border.

In 1878, at the Congress of Berlin, Germany's preponderance in the affairs of Europe became patent to the eyes of the beholder. This body of delegates, embracing the foremost statesmen from the principal countries of Europe, was commissioned to adjust the final outcome of the Russo-Turkish War. Bismarck presided at it in Jove-like style, although he publicly vindicated to himself merely the humbler title of "the honest broker," The Congress ended with Russia's being stripped of nearly all the fruits of her victory, notably of her much-coveted position as arbiter in and protector of the Balkan region with its Slavic populations. It left a bitter sting behind in Russia. The Russian Prime Minister, Prince Gortchakoff, a rival of Bismarck's in the arena of high statesmanship, turned his envenomed foe, and the Russian people as a whole attributed chiefly to Bismarck, and far less to the British wizard, Beaconsfield, their being juggled out of their spoils at the conclave. As a matter of fact, Russian enmity thenceforward became active and, at times, virulent and embarrassing to Germany. Russia began to turn her eyes away from the Spree and toward the Seine. The Franco-Russian entente virtually dated from that hour of impotent chagrin. Thus, from an occasion when the new and frowning empire, founded on war and with a primarily militaristic basis, had apparently arrived at the apogee of power and influence, from its very zenith of glorification, dates, in truth, one of the hidden springs of the great war that exploded in 1914; from a symbol of

tower-like strength it became a symbol of inner weakness.

Its

Enormous sums of money and gigantic labor were devoted by the new Germany to the perfection of her system of internal canalization. Her chief rivers, the Rhine and Elbe, Weser and Oder were thus tapped and connected with each other, and cheap water transportation contributed greatly to traffic and trade. From one point of view the most important of these canals, viz., the one joining the Baltic to the North Sea, commonly styled the Kiel Canal, doubled the availability and striking power of the new and steadily growing German navy. It was inaugurated on 19 June 1895 amid impressive ceremonies by the young emperor. construction, all told, had cost some $80,000,000. The organization of the judicial system, to correspond in scope and competence to the duties imposed upon the empire as such, was an important task which it took years to accomplish. An imperial court was established, with its site in Leipzig, a court whose functions in most respects are not dissimilar to those of the United States Supreme Court at Washington. More and more uniformity of jurisdiction became the fact. Criminal and civil procedure were made of one kind throughout the country as a whole. Federal laws were enacted dealing with trade organization, banking, merchant marine, patents, etc. The Imperial Civil Code, after labors lasting for many years, was adopted and went into effect in 1900. A whole group of laws, beginning in the '80's and continuing into the new century, was framed, the so-called Sozialgesetzgebung (social benefit legislation), having for aim the material safeguarding of the bone and sinew of the nation the laboring element, the skilled toilers, the shopkeepers and smaller dealers and started by Bismarck himself, being originally a sop thrown to these hitherto oppressed and disaffected strata of the population from which the Socialists had chiefly recruited themselves. But this type of legislation was steadily extended, long after Bismarck's dismissal, and attained a couple of years before the outbreak of the great war a fairly comprehensive point, as it took care of its beneficiaries in cases of non-employment, of sickness, of invalidism, of old age, of death and devoting to these purposes (although the enforced weekly contributions of the toilers themselves furnished the bulk of the funds) on the part of government and employers some 250.000,000 marks annually. In all some 17,000,000 of the population of Germany profit from these laws. Again, as a parallel to the already existing statutes enabling cities and towns to regulate their own municipal affairs, undisturbed by the state and nation, a body of laws was enacted conferring similar prerogatives on the rural communities, the Landgemeindeordnung. These two sets of laws have powerfully aided decentralization and local independence. Bismarck, who all his life abhorred red tape, had also initiated the latter sort of legislation.

Meanwhile the movement looking toward the acquisition of a colonial empire abroad had set in. Bismarck all his life had not favored this much. He questioned, for one thing, the fitness of the German people as colonizers. He also dreaded complications for his foreign policy growing out of it. He knew that at best

scarcely any territories in the temperate zone, and hence capable of settling many German emigrants, were available for appropriation. Nevertheless, the current of feeling in favor of colonies, greatly promoted by the emperor, ran so high in Germany for many years that at last he was forced to yield. From 1884 on, whenever opportunity offered, the German people have seized, purchased or otherwise acquired territories for colonial purposes, the official title for such lands being Schutzgebiete, j.e., protectorates. In this way, until the war deprived her of them, Germany gradually accumulated territory (nearly altogether located in the torrid and tropical zones) in various quarters of the globe many times larger than her own home territory. This comprised German Southwest Africa (mostly arid soil, but the only one of her colonies in which white men can live permanently and raise families), adjoining British South Africa, next Kameroon, Togo, German East Africa, German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, Samoa and some smaller groups of islands, all acquired before or in 1890. Then she obtained the Carolines, as well as in China the small territory of Kiaochou. Opinions are rather divided as to the kind of use made by Germany of her colonies. Certainly, the first 20 years undeniable blunders were made. The formidable uprising of a warlike tribe in German Southwest Africa, the Hereros, and its suppression with great bloodshed and cruelty, made much talk. on the whole it appears to be the fact that little by little during the altogether but 30 years that Germany had to gain practical experience -in several of her larger colonies she began to be fairly successful, both as to commercial results and as to administrative methods. The oft-tested "trade follows the flag" seems to have once more held true. And certainly it seems to be also true that in some of the more valuable and larger German colonies, notably in German East Africa and in German Southwest Africa, the natives during trying war times showed as much attachment to their German overlords as they could reasonably be expected to show in a cause of which they understood nothing. Some of the intrinsically most valuable colonial lands once held by Germany were exchanged for the tiny, but in naval strategy extremely vital, island of Heligoland, near the mouth of the Elbe River, by the successor of Bismarck, General Count Caprivi, a complete disbeliever in German colonial_aggrandizement. These were the sultanate of Sansibar and the lands of Uganda and Witu in Africa, now belonging to Great Britain.

But

Returning to Bismarck, the year 1888 brought on not only the final demise of his nonagenarian "old master" (as he spoke of him), William I, but also, after but a threemonths' sorrowful reign, that of his son, the more liberal-minded Frederick III, and after acting for so many years very successfully the part of the major domus, the real head, under his attached sovereign, a man singularly free of personal ambition, the stern old Chancellor stood facing the young and impetuous successor, William II. It was a situation inherently impossible for any length of time. William II all through his reign has only tolerated for any length of time mediocrity in his immediate entourage. He could not brook such a mentor as

Bismarck. After some 20 months of semi-hostilities, after the patching up of several quarrels between them, the complete rupture came at last, in March 1890, and the gnarled old statesman formally resigned and retired to his bosky Tusculum at Friedrichsruh, near Hamburg. There the present writer paid him, eight years later and but six weeks before his death, a visit for the purpose of learning the old statesman's views regarding the Spanish-American War. The eight years between 1890 and 1898 Bismarck spent mostly in watching impotently the "new course," the "zigzag course," as he termed it, and in cursing the "young man in Berlin" under his breath. The immediate cause of the rupture, in March 1890, had been the refusal of the young monarch to sanction renewal of the anti-Socialist special legislation already referred to. Freed from the chafing restraint exercised by the older and more experienced man, the Kaiser in his characteristically impulsive way devoted himself to the task of reconciling the Socialists to his person, to his methods, to his aims. In all of which, although no more anti-Socialist laws had been passed, he failed completely. Then William II turned and himself became the virulent foe of the Socialists, terming them in one of his most typical speeches, "Eine Rotte Menschen, nicht wert, den Namen von Deutschen zu tragen» (a lot of men unworthy to bear the name of Germans), and not until after the great war itself had started, in 1914, did William II again speak to one of them.

Up to 1879 the young empire, largely to foster its nascent industry, had adhered to low import and export duties. But in that year, internal political considerations rendering it inadvisable for the government longer to resist the steady pressure exerted by the land-holding classes, the so-called Agrarians (identical in the main with the rural aristocracy of the Prussian provinces lying east of the Elbe, and whence the larger half of the higher and more influential office-holders and army commanders are drawn), a high protective tariff was enacted. This and subsequent even more drastic measures of a similar kind bore with particular weight upon the lower classes, the humbler breadwinners of the industrial towns, since it greatly heightened the price of all foodstuffs without a corresponding rise in wages. Some articles of diet, meats particularly, increased almost to prohibitive rates. This state of things remained unaltered from early in the nineties on. Reciprocity treaties were concluded, one after the other, with Austria-Hungary, Russia, the Scandinavian countries, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, etc. These in a measure shifted economic conditions in this respect. From then on German industry grew rapidly in volume and efficiency. In 1876, at the Philadelphia Exposition, the imperial commissioner, Reuleaux, in his official reports, had been obliged to stigmatize German industrial exhibits as "cheap and nasty." Now, under these novel conditions, German industry had rapidly become so formidable a competitor that England decreed her "Made in Gremany» mandate, vainly attempting thereby to stem the tide of German exports. Part of what William II designated as his "Weltpolitik" consisted in this strenuous race for mercantile supremacy, and he took good care, in his speeches to his

people in season and out of season, to impress them with the necessity of a constant growth as an exporting nation. Similarly, German shipping and German trade increased by leaps and bounds. The world began to take note of the "German danger." But in 1902 a new tariff law passed the Reichstag, once again enhancing the duties on foodstuffs, once more with the aim of favoring the Agrarian (or younker), interests of the nation. The Socialist party coined as an election slogan the phrase "bread usury." At the new Reichstag elections, in June 1903, it was clearly shown that the humbler classes condemned outright the new tariff. While the Socialists increased their delegation in the Reichstag from 56 to 81 and their popular vote from 2,107,000 ballots to over 3,010,000 cast, the Agrarian vote considerably diminished and even the biggest party, the Centre, mustered but 1,875,000 votes. However, the nonSocialists in the Reichstag pooled their issues and showed a united front in that body, thus enabling them to enact the new Zolltarif of 1904, granting none of the Socialist demands. However, even this unwise legislation was not able to retard the rapid increase of Germany's industrial progress. It outdistanced England's, relatively speaking, in many quarters of the globe.

While the chief claim of his grandfather, William I, to the title of a great ruler, had consisted not so much in his own initiative and in his own qualities, but rather in a wonderful knack possessed by him in unerringly picking the right man for the right place and then modestly stepping back and allowing him a free hand, William II prided himself on the contrary in always leading the van in all that he deemed might advance the interests and power of Germany. In the endeavor to found a colonial empire, in the promotion of German industry, trade, shipping, in all the measures that were calculated to consolidate the nation, in a reform of the German school system, in the fashioning of the most powerful army on the globe, and lastly in the creation of a huge navy William II was always the driving agency, the determining factor. He aimed at turning the German school system into one having a purely national and patriotic basis, so that the German boys and youths should not become, as he put it, "young Romans or Greeks," should not deem the acquisition of classic lore the chief desideratum, but rather first become deeply versed in the language, literature and history of their own country and race; and in a measure he succeeded. With his own conviction that Germany needed a navy large and efficient enough to cope with any foe, no matter which, on the water, the overwhelming bulk of the nation for years and years did not agree. Reluctantly only the German people followed him on this path. In the south and in the interior 'provinces especially, those far removed from the Waterkant and unfamiliar with the sea, the Kaiser's naval program was never popular. Nevertheless, with resistless energy he pursued his way, overcoming all obstacles. The German navy, in its development, was based, first, on the Reichstag act of 1900, supplemented by those of 1906 and 1912. The latter program was to have been completed by 1923 and provided for a fleet of 41 first-class battleships, 12 battlecruisers and 30 smaller cruisers, with an

additional 18 cruisers for foreign service and also to replace worn-out vessels. In 1914-15 the naval budget was $117,000,000 and its man power comprised 3,700 commissioned officers, with 75,468 men. For a decade and more before the outbreak of the war the keynote of Germany's foreign policy was a growing estrangement from Great Britain. At the bottom of this feeling was commercial rivalry. The Kaiser aided this by his indiscreet utterances on the occasion of the Jameson raid and during the early stages of the Boer War in South Africa. In the Russo-Japanese War Germany's attitude was friendly to Russia. Then came the first Morocco episode, Germany thus testing the strength of the Franco-British understanding. It led to the very brink of war in 1905, until at the conference of Algeciras the moot points were settled, greatly to Germany's dissatisfaction. To her dismay even her nominal ally, Italy, had sided against her at Algeciras. Bülow, then Chancellor, in an attempt at selfirony, referred to the incident as an "extra tour." Twice before since 1871, still under the Bismarckian era, war with France had been near, in 1875 and in 1887 (during the Boulanger obsession), but had been averted by the consummate statesmanship of the old Chancellor. With the Kaiser, being in fact his own Chancellor, things could not run so smoothly. Largely this was owing to the peculiar mental and moral makeup of William II. A firm believer in the divine origin of his office, as confessed by one of his most noted utterances, wherein he declared that he owed his "awful responsibility toward the Creator alone, where from no man, no minister, no parliament, no people can relieve the sovereign," he harbored most exalted notions of his own importance. He lacked entirely the deep human humility of his grandfather, although in many things he took the latter for a model. No ruler during historical times has been so profuse and varied a public orator, nor one so careless in shocking enlightened public opinion. Volumes of his speeches have appeared from time to time, exhibiting him in a curiously kaleidoscopic aspect. Many of his remarks sound almost maniacal in their frenzy. Many have been frequently quoted, as his farewell remarks to the detachment of German troops for the seat of the Boxer rebellion in China, where he compared himself to Attila, the Hun, characterized the Chinese as "cowardly curs," and enjoined his men to "spare nobody, make no prisoners": the injunction to a body of recruits in Berlin to "shoot down, if need be, their own mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, in order to fulfil their flag oath," and many more. There is a never-ending recurrence in his speeches to the fact that his own throne was founded in bloodshed and maintained by "the bayonets of his faithful army," a constantly reiterated assertion that his "trust is in his army." His apologists in their commentaries advance various explanations. Probably, however, physical reasons, bodily ailments have something to do with it all.

The "zigzag course," as Bismarck called it, pursued by the Kaiser was, of course, reflected in his choice of Chancellors after the real founder of the empire had been dismissed in disgrace. Caprivi's term was short; a thorough disbeliever in the colonizing venture, his views

did not harmonize at any time with those of his master, but he obeyed the latter as his "chief commander," without questioning his orders. Prince Clovis Hohenlohe, the scion of a famous and ancient house, members of which had been leaders when the Hohenzollerns were still in obscurity, was a man of different type used to the democratic ways of the South Germans, a kindly grandseigneur of the old school, easy-going, to be coaxed rather than bidden. When, however, the Kaiser over the head of the old gentleman had plunged into the Kiaochou adventure and almost precipitated war, Hohenlohe got out from under and made way to another man from the north, to Prince Bülow, courtly, of artistic leanings, a clever, pliable diplomat, not a statesman. He in turn met his fall by, for once, siding with the liberal Left in the Reichstag in favor of a more equable distribution of taxes in a pending bill, one making the Agrarians (and Younkers) bear a juster share of the burdens. Bülow was followed by Ernst von Bethmann-Hollweg, a wellmeaning mediocrity whose will to arrive at a better understanding with Great Britain was good, but who shrank from the only means to arrive at that result.

When, in 1908, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, and when Russia and Serbia made warlike preparations, the Germany of those days identified herself with her neighbor and ally and unready Russia backed down. In 1910 the problem of a fairer and more liberal electoral system for Prussia played the greatest part, and the Prussian Diet (with the co-operation of the cabinet) succeeded in defeating the proposed reform. The three-class electoral system, characterized by Bismarck himself as "the worst in the world" and by means of which 85 per cent of the voting population choose but one-third of the membership of the Landtag (Chamber of Deputies), was retained, despite repeated pledges of the Kaiser, as king of Prussia, to abolish the iniquitous system. In the following year. Germany and Russia amicably agreed as to the Near East, especially Persia and Mesopotamia, Germany being allowed to continue her Bagdad Railway and to exploit that section commercially. During the same year another embroilment with France and England arose over Morocco. It was settled with a good deal of difficulty by France yielding up to Germany 112,000 square miles of French Kongo, in exchange for sanctioning France's protectorate over Morocco. In 1912 another memorable Reichstag election took place. The "BlueBlack Bloc" (ie., the Junkers and the Centre party) were facing the Socialists and Liberals at the polls. The central government interfered, declaring against the latter and dubbing them enemies of the Crown. Nevertheless, the Socialists increased their number in the Reichstag by a score, to 110 seats, and their popular vote to 4,238,000. Despite this the illiberal elements in the national Parliament remained in control. They sanctioned, on the pretext of the threatening attitude of the Triple Entente, immense war preparations and a rousing special tax. The Zabern affair of 1913, originally due to trifling causes but clearly showing the preponderating influence of unchecked militarism, created a great sensation, both in and out of Germany. Throughout this

whole period of 1871-1914, the country unmistakably exhibited an inner rift, occasioned by the fact that the wonderful economic progress of the nation was not accompanied by a similar political progress. The Reichstag membership was still based on the old population census of 1870, taking no account of the enormous growth of the urban population, with its overwhelming Socialist makeup, so that the outworn rural predominance of the Younker class was still retained. In the Prussian Diet (and, in a minor degree, in the other states of Germany) the misrepresentation was far worse. Practically, the ancient system amounted to a partial disfranchisement of the_most_progressive and best portions of the nation. The large cities, it is true, nearly all sent Socialist delegates to the Reichstag, where, however, they found themselves impotent to effect serious political reforms because of the greater number of the Younker element and its allies whose election was rendered feasible under the misrepresentative old census.

In foreign policies Germany has been, ever since the formation, first, of the Zweibund (Austria-Hungary and Germany) and, next, of the Dreibund (with Italy added), dominated by the parlous situation thus created. For Germany it has been a veritable Procrustean bed. Europe was, for many years before the actual eruption of 1914, practically divided into two hostile camps, with France, England and Russia on the one side and the Dreibund on the other, thus paralyzing all efforts of the nations to live in hearty concord, a thoroughly unhealthy state of things, one breeding all around distrust and hatred and rendering impossible harmony.

Of course, there have been man" seeing eyes in Germany herself which discerned clearly the abnormal features in the above, features threatening perpetually the peace of the world. Bismarck, himself the creator of the Zweibund, and subsequently of the Dreibund, was by no means blind to the inherent dangers lurking in such a federation. In his literary legacy, his two volumes (with a separate appendix) of reminiscences and political reflections, published under the title of Gedanken und Erinnerungen, he dwells at length on the genesis of these two compacts. He discusses dispassionately their value as measures of safety and defense, and reaches the conclusion in so many plain words that neither the Zweibund nor the Dreibund were in themselves blessings, but rather temporary remedies to meet temporary exigencies. As to their weak points he had no illusions. Italy he would have liked to eliminate as a partner altogether. But above all, in his discussion of the whole problem he emphatically insists that the alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy ought not to be looked upon as one calculated to possess permanence, giving his reasons for this opinion in unvarnished terms. It is a singular fact, nevertheless, that during this period here under discussion, beginning with the erection of a new Germanic empire and ending with the frightful war, although a period amazing so far as Germany's material progress goes, there have been but a handful of German writers doing distinguished service in elucidating public opinion as to her vital political life. Heinrich von Treitschke, who for a number of years helped to form political opinion in Germany, may be called the