hadow, will be sacrificed
sooner or later. His autocratic methods will end by producing the same
results as those of the most jealous of democracies.

Let us bear in mind how often, under Bismarck and William I, the German
Press made mock of our fatal French mania for change, pointing out to
Europe how the everlasting see-saw of Ministers of War was bound to
reduce our national defences to a position of inferiority. In two
years William is at his fourth!

Soon, no doubt, William II will be able to score a personal success in
the matter of his intrigues against Count Taaffe. His benevolence
spares not his allies. We know the measure of his good-will towards
Italy. Lately, it seems, the Emperor, King of Prussia, said to the
Count of Launay, King Humbert's Ambassador at Berlin, "Do not forget
that, sooner or later, Trieste is destined to become a German port."
And it was doubtless with this generous idea in his mind that he had
his compliments conveyed to M. Crispi for his anti-irridentist speech
at Florence.

That the Triple Alliance is the "safeguard of peace," has become a
catchword that each of the allies repeats with wearisome reiteration.
But there! It is not that William II does not wish for war: it is
Germany which forbids him to seek it. It was not M. Crispi who
declined to seek a pretext for attacking France: it was Italy that
forbade him to find it. It is not the Germanised Austrians who
hesitate to provoke Russia: it is the Slavs who threaten that if a
provocation takes place they will revolt.

Let me add that the official organs in Germany, Italy and Vienna only
raise a smile nowadays when they describe Russia and France as
thunderbolts of war.

November 12, 1890. [15]

At the outset of the reign of William II, referring to his father, I
spoke of the "dead hand" and its power over the living. Now, what has
the young King of Prussia done since his accession to the Throne? He,
the flatterer of Bismarck, this disciple of Pastor Stoeker, this
out-and-out soldier, this hard and haughty personage, who was wont to
blame his august parents for their bourgeois amiability and their
frequent excursions? He carries out everything that his father
planned, but he does it under impulse from without and he does it
badly, without forethought, without the sincerity or the natural
quality which is revealed in a man by a course of skilful action
legitimate in its methods.

He smashed Von Bismarck in bruta