from
them, only to be thrown the kisses of flattery in return. He sneered
at them, only to be begged for his favors in return. He took their
cities in time of peace, and they acknowledged the theft by a smirking
adulation that he allowed one of their number to be crowned a king.

As for Napoleon, he performed a prolonged autopsy upon the Germans.
They were dismembered or joined together as suited his plans. At his
beck they fought against one another, or against Russia, or against
England. He tossed them crowns, that they still wear proudly, as a
master tosses biscuits to obedient spaniels. He put his poor relatives
to rule over them, here and there, and they were grateful. He marched
into their present capital, took away their monuments, and the sword
of Frederick the Great, and they hailed him with tears and rejoicing
as their benefactor, while their wittiest poet and sweetest singer,
lauded him to the skies.

It is unpleasant to recall, but quite unfair to forget, these
happenings of the last two hundred years in the history of the German
people. What would any man say, after this, was their greatest need,
if not self-confidence; if not twenty-five years of peace to enable
them to recover from their beatings and humiliation; if not a powerful
army and navy to give them the sense of security, by which alone
prosperity and pride in their accomplishments and in themselves can be
fostered; if not a ruler who holds ever before their eyes their ideals
and the unfaltering energy required of them to attain them!

What nation would not be self-conscious after such dire experiences?
What nation would not be tenderly sensitive as to its treatment by
neighboring powers? What nation would not be even unduly keen to
resent any appearance of an attempt to jostle it from its hard-won
place in the sun? Their self-consciousness and sensitiveness and
vanity are patent, but they are pardonable. As the leader of the
Conservative party in the Reichstag, Doctor von Heydebrandt, speaking
at Breslau in October, 1911, anent the Morocco controversy, said,
after, alluding to the "bellicose impudence" of Lloyd-George: "The
[British] ministry thrusts its fist under our nose, and declares, I
alone command the world. It is bitterly hard for us who have 1870
behind us." They feel that they should no longer be treated to such
bumptiousness.

I trust that I am no swashbuckler, but I have the greatest sympathy
with the present Emperor in his capac