eclipse, of which 1870 and 1914 are important parts, but by
no means the whole.

Woven with it is the struggle of nations for the possession of their own
soul. Consider 1870 in this light: Through that war France took her soul
out of the custody of an Emperor and handed it to the people; through
the same war Germany placed her soul in the hands of an Emperor.
Defeated France, rid of her Bonapartes; victorious Germany, shackled to
her Hohenzollern! In the light of forty-five years how those two
opposite actions gleam with significance, and how in the same light the
two words _defeat_ and _victory_ grow lambent with shifting import!
Unless our democratic faith be vain, France walked forward then, and
Germany backward. But this did not seem so last June.

VIII

Had it not culminated before our eyes, the case of Germany would be
perfectly incredible. As it stands to-day, the truly incredible thing
is that she should have made her spring at the throat of an
unexpecting, unprepared world. Now that she _has_ sprung, the
diagnosis of her case has been often and ably made--before the event,
Dr. Charles Sarolea, a Belgian gentleman, made it notably; but
prophets are seldom recognized except by posterity. The case of
Germany is a hospital case, a case for the alienist; the mania of
grandeur, complemented by the mania of persecution.

Very well do I remember the first dawning hint I had of this diseased
mental state. It was Wednesday, August 5, 1914. We were in mid-ocean.
Before the bulletin board we passengers were clustered to read that
day's marconigram and learn what more of Europe had fallen to pieces
since yesterday. This morning was posted the Kaiser's proclamation,
quoting Hamlet, calling on his subjects "to be or not to be," and to
defy a world conspired against them. In these words there was such a
wild, incoherent ring of exaltation that I said to a friend: "Can he
be off his head?"

Later in that voyage we sped silent and unlanterned through the fog
from two German cruisers, of which nobody seemed personally afraid but
one stewardess. She said: "They're all wild beasts. They would send
us all to the bottom." No one believed her. Since then we believe her.
Since then we have heard the wild incoherent ring in many German
voices besides the Kaiser's, and we know to-day that Germany's mania
is analogous to those mental epidemics of the Middle Ages, when
fanaticism, usually religious, sent entire communities i