e attitude of continental nations during the
struggle. This has been in all cases correct upon the part of the
governments, and in nearly all cases incorrect upon the part of the
people. A few brave and clear-headed men, like Yves Guyot in France, and
M. Tallichet and M. Naville in Switzerland, have been our friends, or
rather the friends of truth; but the vast majority of all nations have
been carried away by that flood of prejudice and lies which has had its
source in a venal, or at best an ignorant, press. In this country the
people in the long run can always impose its will upon the Government,
and it has, I believe, come to some very definite conclusions which will
affect British foreign policy for many years to come.

Against France there is no great bitterness, for we feel that France has
never had much reason to look upon us in any light save that of an
enemy. For many years we have wished to be friendly, but the traditions
of centuries are not so easily forgotten. Besides, some of our
shortcomings are of recent date. Many of us were, and are, ashamed of
the absurd and hysterical outcry in this country over the Dreyfus case.
Are there no miscarriages of justice in the Empire? An expression of
opinion was permissible, but the wholesale national abuse has disarmed
us from resenting some equally immoderate criticism of our own character
and morals. To Russia also we can bear no grudge, for we know that there
is no real public opinion in that country, and that their press has no
means for forming first-hand conclusions. Besides, in this case also
there is a certain secular enmity which may account for a warped
judgment.

But it is very different with Germany. Again and again in the world's
history we have been the friends and the allies of these people. It was
so in the days of Marlborough, in those of the Great Frederick, and in
those of Napoleon. When we could not help them with men we helped them
with money. Our fleet has crushed their enemies. And now, for the first
time in history, we have had a chance of seeing who were our friends in
Europe, and nowhere have we met more hatred and more slander than from
the German press and the German people. Their most respectable journals
have not hesitated to represent the British troops--troops every bit as
humane and as highly disciplined as their own--not only as committing
outrages on person and property, but even as murdering women and
children.

At first this unex