aris officially, as the ally of
France, so that all the ambitions of our patriotism, all our dreams of
the last twenty-five years, are coming true together. Am I not
entitled to say to you, dear readers, "I have fulfilled the mission
that I set before myself, my work amongst you is accomplished"? But
there remains still a tie between us, our common fidelity to Alsace!
How could we forget those who have not ceased to remember? Shall it be
said that we failed those who rather than yield have suffered every
form of torture? Let us endeavour together to prove in a more active
manner our devotion to the brethren who are separated from us. Now
that Prince Bismarck has one foot in the grave, now that the Russian
Alliance is in the hands of the Government of France, let us devote all
our strength and all the resources of our advocacy, all our love of
justice, to the cause of Alsace-Lorraine. . . .

William II is sick, nervous and irritable. He has lost all patience
with the question of the reform of military organisation; he did not
raise that question, it would seem, and has plenty of other things to
worry him. He is going to ask Parliament, on its re-assembling, to
vote large sums for the increase of the navy, his own particular care.
After all, he received the army triumphant from the hands of Moltke and
of Bismarck, but the navy is his own personal achievement; he believes
this, and says so repeatedly. But the German navy has no luck. This
year, besides the _Iltis_, the _Frauenlob_, and the _Amazone_, which
swallowed up a large number of junior officers of the Prussian navy, it
has lost the _Kurfurstin_ (as the result of an error of navigation)
with 300 sailors, also the _Augusta_, the _Undine_, and other vessels.

February 22, 1897. [5]

William II has announced himself as the enemy of Greece, and the prop
of the Ottoman Empire. At the subscription ball given at the Opera in
Berlin, did he not walk arm-in-arm with Ghalik Bey, the Turkish
Ambassador, and authorise him to telegraph to the Sultan that, under
existing conditions, he might count upon his sense of justice and his
good-will? Does not this constitute an insolent challenge to the
decision which the Powers are supposed to have taken for the
observation of neutrality?

When William II is insolent, he does not do things by halves; now, he
repeats to all concerned: "One does not argue with Greece, one gives
her orders," and on every occasion that has