For purposes of comparison one may note that our own later national budgets run roughly to $1,000,000,000. The British budget for 1911 was $906,420,000. After the French war, speculation on a large scale ensued. The payment of the $1,000,000,000 indemnity had a bad effect. As has often happened in America, money, or the mere means of exchange, was taken for wealth. The earth will be as cold as the moon before men learn that the only real wealth is health. Many schemes and companies were floated and after 1873 there was a prolonged financial crisis in Germany. It is said that bankruptcy and the liquidation of bubble companies entailed a loss of a round $90,000,000. It was in 1876-7, when Germany was thus suffering, that the policy of protection was mooted and finally put into operation by Bismarck in 1879. Ten years later the laws for accident, old age, and sickness insurance were passed, at the instigation and under the direct influence of the present Emperor. The tonnage of steam vessels under 4,000 tons in Great Britain (net tons) was, some five years ago, 8,165,527; in Germany (gross tons), 977,410; but the tonnage of steam vessels of 4,000 tons and over was in Great Britain 1,446,486, in Germany 1,119,537! It should be added that no small part of Great Britain's big ships belong to the American Shipping Trust, sailing under the British flag. Albert Ballin became a director of the Hamburg-American line in 1886, and was made general director in 1900. During his directorship the capital of the line has been increased from 15,000,000 to 125,000,000 of marks, and the number of steamers from 26 to 170. Germany's combined export and import trade in 1880 was $1,429,025,000; in 1890, $1,875,050,000; and in 1905 it was $3,324,018,000; in 1910, $4,019,072,250. The German production of coal and coal products in 1910 was the highest in its history, amounting to 265,148,232 metric tons. It would be easy enough to chronicle the commercial and industrial strides of Germany during the last quarter of a century by the compilation of a catalogue of figures. It is not my intention to persuade the reader to believe in any such fantastic theory as that the present Kaiser is entirely responsible for this progress. I am no Pygmalion that I can make an Emperor by breathing prayers before pages of statistics. It is only fair, however, in any sketch of the Emperor to give this skeleton outline of what has taken place in the empire over which he rules, and which, in certain quarters, it is said, he menaces by his predilection for war. These few figures spell peace, they do not spell war, and the ruler who has some 700,000 armed men at his back, and a navy the second in strength in the world guarding his shores, and a mercantile marine carrying his trade which is hard on the heels of Great Britain as a rival, but who has none the less kept his country at peace with the world for twenty-five years, may be credited at least with good intentions.