pers
as the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, and from the influence of certain of his
colleagues. Constitutionalism he appears to have hated. The democracy
of Germany was not suited to such leading as Lloyd George, during the
war, gave to England, and Clemenceau to France. In Germany, he declares,
a strong hand is always required, and a revolution is inevitable in case
the hand is weak, and defeat follows. For Germany needed "the
Prussian-German State." The tradition of Frederick the Great and
Bismarck was its protecting spirit.

Can we wonder, if the narrative of this capable man is accurate, that
Bethmann struggled for his rival policy of conciliation in the face of
almost insuperable difficulties? Tirpitz had a strong party at his back,
both in Prussia and elsewhere. What made it strong was largely that its
members shared his view of England and of the situation. "They looked to
us," he says, "it was the last chance of international freedom." I
thought in 1912 that Bethmann might in the end win, for in the main at
that time the Emperor was with him, and so were Ballin and many others
of great influence. The Social Democrats, too, were gaining influence
rapidly. But the presence of a powerful school of thought at the back of
Tirpitz, a school which, had it succeeded, would have secured the place
it desired by reducing to a precarious state the life of my own country,
made me feel that, while we must do all we could to extend our
friendships so as to convert and bring in Germany, the chances of
success did not preponderate sufficiently to justify relaxation of
either vigilance in preparation or resolution in policy. My feeling
remained what I had tried to express in the address delivered at Oxford
in August of 1911. "I wish," I said then, "all our politicians who
concern themselves with Anglo-German relations, those who are pro-German
as well as those who are not, could go to Berlin and learn something,
not only of the language and intellectual history of Prussia, but of the
standpoint of her people--and of the disadvantages as well as the
advantages of an excessive lucidity of conception. Nowhere else in
Germany that I know of is this to be studied so advantageously and so
easily as in Berlin, the seat of Government, the headquarters of
_Real-politik_, and it seems to me most apparent among the highly
educated classes there."

Bismarck does not appear to have known much while in office about
Tirpitz, and when the latter desir