issues, good or bad for human kind,
Is happy as a Lover; and attired
With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired;
And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;

* * * * * *

Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,
Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,
And leave a dead unprofitable name--
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause:
This is the Happy Warrior; this is He
That every Man in arms should wish to be.
--_William Wordsworth_.

CHAPTER XXIII

FIFTY YEARS OF WARNING

(1864-1914)

In 1864 the Fathers of Confederation met at Quebec, while the Germans
took from the Danes the neck of land through which they cut the Kiel
Canal to give the German Navy a safe back way between the North Sea and
the Baltic. At first sight you cannot understand why Canadian
Confederation and the German attack on Denmark should ever be mentioned
together. But, just as the waters of two streams in the same river
system are bound to meet in the end, so Canada and Germany were bound
to meet on the same battlefield when once Canada had begun to grow into
a nation within the British Empire and Germany had begun to grow into
an empire for whose ambitions there was no room without a series of
victorious wars. After beating Austria in 1866, to win the leadership
of Central Europe, Germany beat France in 1870, took Alsace and
Lorraine, and made herself the strongest land-power in the world. Even
then two such very different Englishmen as Cardinal Newman and John
Stuart Mill foresaw the clash that was bound to come between the new
empire of the Germans and the old one of the British. But most people
never see far ahead, while many will not look at all if the prospect
seems to be unpleasant.

Thirty years before the war (1884) Germany began to get an empire
overseas. Taking every possible chance she went on till she had a
million square miles and fifteen million natives. But she neither had
nor could get without victorious war any land outside of Germany where
she could bring up German children under the German flag. Even
including the German parts of Austria there was barely one
quarter-million of square miles on which German-speaking people could
go on growing under