The truth is that if our ordinary Englishman and German were to sit
down together, and with the help of books, maps, and newspapers,
carefully and without prejudice, consider the annals of their
respective countries for the last sixteen years with a view to
establishing the causes of their delusion, they could hardly fail to
confess that it was due to neither believing a word the other said; to
each crediting the other with motives which, as individuals and men of
honesty and integrity in the private relations of life, each would
indignantly repudiate; to each assuming the other to be in the
condition of barbarism mankind began to emerge from nineteen hundred
years ago; to both supposing that Christianity has had so little
influence on the world that peoples are still compelled to live and go
about their daily work armed to the teeth lest they may be bludgeoned
and robbed by their neighbours; that the hundreds of treaties solemnly
signed by contracting nations are mere pieces of waste paper only
testifying to the profundity and extent of human hypocrisy; that
churches and cathedrals have been built, universities, colleges, and
schools founded, only to fill the empty air with noise; that the
printing presses of all countries have been occupied turning out
myriads of books and papers which have had no effect on the reason or
conscience of mankind; that nations learn nothing from experience; and
to each supposing that he and his fellow-countrymen alone are the
monopolists of wisdom, honour, truth, justice, charity--in short, of
all the attributes and blessings of civilization. Is it not time to
discard such error, or must the nations always suspect each other? To
finish with our introduction, and notwithstanding that _qui s'excuse
s'accuse_, the biographer may be permitted to say a few words on his
own behalf. Inasmuch as the subject of his biography is still, as has
been said, happily alive, and is, moreover, in the prime of his
maturity, his life cannot be reviewed as a whole nor the ultimate
consequences of his character and policy be foretold. The biographer
of the living cannot write with the detachment permissible to the
historian of the dead. No private correspondence of the Emperor's is
available to throw light on his more intimate personal disposition and
relationships. There have been many rumours of war since his
accession, but no European war of great importance; and if a few minor
campaigns in tropical countr