believe her
mediation would be accepted by both parties: otherwise her conduct
would not be mediation, but be regarded, in accordance with diplomatic
usage, as intervention with coercive measures in the background. For
such a policy Germany had no disposition, for it meant running the
risk of a diplomatic defeat on the one hand and of an armed conflict
with England on the other.

As regards the visit of the President to Berlin and the Emperor's
refusal to receive him, the Chancellor asked would a reception have
done any good either to the President or to Germany, and he answered
his own question with an emphatic negative. To the President an
audience would have been of no more use than the ovations and
demonstrations he was greeted with in Paris. To Germany a reception
would have meant a shifting of international relations to the
disadvantage of the country: in other words, would have meant the
risk, almost the certainty, of war. "Wars," said the Chancellor in
this connexion,

"are much more easily unchained through elementary popular
passions, through the passionate excitation of public
opinion, than in the old days through the ambitions of
monarchs or through the jealousies of Ministers."

And he concluded:

"With regard to England we stand entirely independent of
her: we are not a hair's-breadth more dependent on England
than England is on us. But we are ready on the basis of
mutual consideration and complete equality--about this
obvious preliminary condition for a proper relation between
two Great Powers we have never left any Power in doubt: I
say, we are ready on this basis to live with England in
peace, friendship, and harmony. To play the Don Quixote and
to lay the lance in rest and attack wherever in the world
English windmills are to be found, for that we are not
called upon."

But just then there was little prospect of "peace friendship, and
harmony" with England. The world remembers, and unfortunately the
English people do not forget, that they had nowhere more bitter and
offensive critics than in Germany. One refined method of opprobrium
was the unprohibited sale in the main streets of Berlin of spittoons
bearing the countenance of the English Colonial Minister, Mr.
Chamberlain. A war with England would at that moment have been highly
popular in Germany, but as the Chancellor wisely reminded the
Parliament, it was the duty o