after Bismarck had brought it to unexampled success in things material.
There are not wanting indications that he himself had the sense of the
necessity of great caution in pursuing this policy farther, and felt
that it could not be safely continued without modification. It was no
policy that was safe for any but the strongest and sanest of minds, and
even for those it had ceased to be safe. The potential resistance to it
was becoming too serious.

But we do not need to doubt that there were many in Germany itself who
saw this and did not desire to rely merely on blood and iron. The men
and women in every country resemble those in other countries more than
they differ from them. Germany was no exception to the rule. It is a
great mistake to judge her as she was merely from a few newspapers and
by the reports from Berlin of their special correspondents. Sixty-eight
millions of people could not be estimated in their opinions by the
attitude of a handful, however eminent and prominent, in the home of
"_Real politik_." It is, of course, true that the Germans were taught to
believe that they were a very great nation which had not got its full
share of the good things of this world, a share of which they were more
worthy and for which they were better organized than any other. But it
is also true that we here thought that we ourselves were entitled to a
great deal to which other people did not admit our moral title. It was
not only Germany that was lacking in imagination. No doubt many Germans
had the idea that we wished to hem them in and that we did not like
them. Our failure to make ourselves understood left them not without
reason for this belief. But dislike of Germany was not the attitude of
the great mass of sober and God-fearing Englishmen, and I do not believe
that the counter-attitude was that of the bulk of sober and God-fearing
Germans. They and we alike mutually misjudged each other from what was
written in newspapers and said in speeches by people who were not
responsible exponents of opinion, and neither nation took sufficient
trouble to make clear that what was thus written and said was not
sufficient material on which to judge it. It is very difficult to
diagnose general opinion in a foreign nation, and one of the reasons of
the difficulty is that people at home do not pay sufficient attention to
the fact that their unfriendly utterances about their neighbors are
likely to receive more publicity and attentio