war--by
arbitration. This is not so simple a matter in the Orient, where
conditions are at once old and new, where interests of possibly great
magnitude are as yet undetermined or unappropriated, where possibly
great mineral sources are undeveloped and the capacities of new
markets unascertained; where, in short, the decisive factors of the
problem are undiscovered, it may be unsuspected.

In such cases there is often no certain and readily recognizable line
of demarcation between the two kinds of enterprise; and an undertaking
that may present all the appearance of being a purely commercial
scheme, and be solemnly asseverated to be such by the Power or Powers
promoting it, may turn out on closer examination to be one of great
political significance and incalculable political consequence. Of such
enterprises two immediately spring to mind, the Cape to Cairo railway
and the Baghdad railway, not to mention a score of problematic
undertakings in other parts of Africa or Asia. It will be useful to
keep this general consideration in view when forming an opinion
regarding the Emperor's Oriental policy. That policy is, so far,
almost entirely commercial. Long ago wars used to be made for the sake
of religion, then for the sake of territory. Now they are made for the
sake of new markets.

Yet the Far East is changing with the change in conditions everywhere
in modern times, and it is evident that the premises for any
conclusion as to German foreign policy there may, at any given moment,
be subject to modification. Partly owing to the growth of Germany's
European influence, and to the increase in her navy which has helped
her to it, she is to be found of recent years playing a role in the
Far East which would have been unintelligible to the German of the
last generation. There are many Germans to-day, as in Bismarck's time,
who ridicule the notion that the possibilities of trade in Oriental
countries justify the national risk now run for it and the national
expenditure now made upon it; but it is sometimes forgotten that,
apart from the chance of obtaining concessions for the building of
railways, for the establishment of banks, for the leasing of mines and
working of cotton plantations, there is a large German export of
beads, cloth, and, in short, of hundreds of articles which appeal to
barbarian or only semi-civilized tastes.

Germany, too, looks hopefully forward to a future in which she will be
supplied with the raw mat