he
anti-German agitation became openly aggressive; and the cry that the
German fleet or ours must sink, and that a war between England and
Germany was bound to come some day, speedily ceased to be merely a cry
with our Militarists and became an axiom with them. And what our
Militarists said our Junkers echoed; and our Junker diplomatists played
for. The story of how they manoeuvred to hem Germany and Austria in with
an Anglo-Franco-Russian combination will be found told with soldierly
directness and with the proud candor of a man who can see things from
his own side only in the article by Lord Roberts in the current number
of _The Hibbert Journal_ (October, 1914). There you shall see also,
after the usual nonsense about Nietzsche, the vision of "British
administrators bearing the White Man's Burden," of "young men, fresh
from the public schools of Britain, coming eagerly forward to carry on
the high traditions of Imperial Britain in each new dependency which
comes under our care," of "our fitness as an Imperial race," of "a great
task committed to us by Providence," of "the will to conquer that has
never failed us," of our task of "assuming control of one-fifth of the
earth's surface and the care of one in five of all the inhabitants of
the world." Not a suggestion that the inhabitants of the world are
perhaps able to take care of themselves. Not even a passing recollection
when that White Man's Burden is in question that the men outside the
British Empire, and even inside the German Empire, are by no means
exclusively black. Only the _sancta simplicitas_ that glories in "the
proud position of England," the "sympathy, tolerance, prudence and
benevolence of our rule" in the east (as shown, the Kaiser is no doubt
sarcastically remarking, in the Delhi sedition trial), the chivalrous
feeling that it is our highest duty to save the world from the horrible
misfortune of being governed by anybody but those young men fresh from
the public schools of Britain. Change the words Britain and British to
Germany and German, and the Kaiser will sign the article with
enthusiasm. _His_ opinion, _his_ attitude (subject to that merely verbal
change) word for word.

*Six of One: Half-a-Dozen of The Other.*

Now, please observe that I do not say that the agitation was
unreasonable. I myself steadily advocated the formation of a formidable
armament, and ridiculed the notion that, we, who are wasting hundreds of
millions annually on idlers