A new cock in the barn-yard is never received with great cordiality. He must win his place and his power with his beak and his spurs. We all of us had enough to do before this fellow came along. We are a little jealous of him, we are all uneasier because he is about, and he has done so well at our games, now that he has indeed hung up philosophy, that we are not even sure that it is safe to take him on in a serious match. We have endeavored, therefore, to keep him occupied with his own neighbors, to whom we have extended our best wishes and our moral backing, which is known as keeping the balance of power in Europe. But a new Germany has come into the world. Germany nowadays has a large class, as have the rest of us, who belong to that increasing number of extraordinary people who want money without even knowing how to get on without it. The only satisfactory test of the right to wealth is the ability to get on without it. One of modern civilization's most dangerous pitfalls is the subversive doctrine that all men shall have wealth, even before they have proved their ability to do without it. Germany is gradually arriving at this puny stage of culture, whose beginnings may be said to date from that ominous year for culture, 1492, when Lorenzo di Medici died and Columbus discovered America! During all this time statesmen have insisted that there is no good reason why Germany and England should not be on good terms; gentlemen of various trades and professions from both countries, speaking halting English or embarrassed German, as the case may be, cross each other's boundaries, comment upon the beauties of the respective countries, and overeat themselves in ponderous endeavors to appear cordial and appreciative. Mayors and aldermen swap stories and compliments over turtle and sherry, or over sauerkraut and Johannisberger; bands of students visit Oxford or Heidelberg, and there is a chorus of praise of Goethe from one side, of Shakespeare from the other; and all the while there is an unceasing antiphonal of grimaces and abuse in the press. Not even when Germany exports her latest stage novelties to London, and pantomimic platitudes are dandled under colored lights, does the turmoil of martial talk cease. Not even Teutonic lechery, in the guise of Reinhartian art, dressed in nothing but silence, and making faces at the British censor on the boards of the music-halls, avails anything. Of course all this is nuts to the irresponsible journalists, to the manufacturers of powder, guns, and ships, and to politicians and diplomats out of employment; but it is hard on the taxpayer, who has no dividends from manufacturers of lethal weapons and ships, nor from newspapers, and no notoriety from the self-imposed jobs of the unofficial diplomats.