The real object of these confidential outbursts is not hard to discover. They were an invitation to our country, face to face with the danger that threatened Western Europe, to throw herself into the arms of the stronger, arms ready to open, to clasp Belgium—yes, and to crush her. When we think of the ultimatum issued to Belgium on the following 2nd of August, we realize to what an act of servility and cowardice William II., through this Potsdam interview, would fain have driven King Albert. The conversation between the two sovereigns was reported to the French ambassador, as is shown by a dispatch from M. Cambon, inserted in the French Yellow Book of 1914. This was done solely from a hope that the disaster of a Franco-German war might still be averted. In the higher interests of humanity, it was essential for France to learn that the Emperor had ceased to be an advocate of peace, and was calmly facing the prospect of a new war as something inevitable. The French Government, who, whatever William II. might think, were still anxious for peace, had now to guard carefully against the occurrence of incidents that might prove difficult to smooth over, because they would be regarded as provocations at Berlin. May we suppose that the mental condition of the Emperor, who had become very nervous and irritable, had made him blind to evidence and deaf to persuasion? William II. would not admit the truth that is as clear as daylight to all impartial observers: that France, with a neighbour whose overwhelming military strength was a perpetual menace to her security, had armed with the main purpose of not being left at the mercy of unexpected events or ruthless designs. He had no doubt whatever that the desire for a war of revenge haunted the brain of every Frenchman. The recovery of Alsace-Lorraine, an achievement which most sons of France had banished to the limbo of their patriotic dreams, and only saw now and then as a distant mirage, seemed to him, in his obstinate self-deception, the secret aim towards which most French statesmen were striving. The sanguine and gullible pacifism of the French Radicals and Socialists, which had come so plainly to the fore in their opposition to the three years’ term of military service, was entirely left out of his calculations. When a man persists in a view that is so palpably opposed to the truth, one is inclined to doubt his sincerity. Was the Kaiser misinformed as to the real intentions of France, or, in crediting her with these hostile schemes, was he only looking for a pretext that might seem to justify an attack on his part? This is a question that we have a right to ask to-day. V.