a ruled Germany;
Germany ruled the Concert of Europe. She was planting everywhere the
appliances of that new servile machinery which was her secret; the
absolute identification of national subordination with business
employment; so that Krupp could count on Kaiser and Kaiser on Krupp.
Every other commercial traveller was pathetically proud of being both a
slave and a spy. The old and the new tyrants had taken hands. The "sack"
of the boss was as silent and fatal as the sack of the Bosphorus. And
the dream of the citizen was at an end.

It was under a sky so leaden and on a road so strewn with bones that the
little mountain democracy with its patriarchal prince went out, first
and before all its friends, on the last and seemingly the most hopeless
of the rebellions against the Ottoman Empire. Only one of the omens
seemed other than disastrous; and even that was doubtful. For the
successful Mediterranean attack on Tripoli while proving the gallantry
of the Italians (if that ever needed proving) could be taken in two
ways, and was seen by many, and probably most, sincere liberals as a
mere extension of the Imperialist reaction of Bosnia and Paardeberg, and
not as the promise of newer things. Italy, it must be remembered, was
still supposed to be the partner of Prussia and the Hapsburgs. For days
that seemed like months the microscopic state seemed to be attempting
alone what the Crusades had failed to accomplish. And for days Europe
and the great powers were thunderstruck, again and yet again, by the
news of Turkish forts falling, Turkish cohorts collapsing, the
unconquerable Crescent going down in blood. The Serbians, the
Bulgarians, the Greeks had gathered and risen from their lairs; and men
knew that these peasants had done what all the politicians had long
despaired of doing, and that the spirit of the first Christian Emperor
was already standing over the city that is named after his name.

For Germany this quite unexpected rush was a reversal of the whole tide
of the world. It was as if the Rhine itself had returned from the ocean
and retired into the Alps. For a long time past every important
political process in Europe had been produced or permitted by Prussia.
She had pulled down ministers in France and arrested reforms in Russia.
Her ruler was acclaimed by Englishmen like Rhodes, and Americans like
Roosevelt, as the great prince of the age. One of the most famous and
brilliant of our journalists called him "the L