In his position with regard to the Reichstag and his influence on that heterogeneous assembly, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg cannot be compared with his predecessor. He has lived and still lives as a being apart, amid the indifference or hostility of the middle-class (otherwise known as monarchical) parties. The Liberals expected him to carry out a promised reform of the Prussian electoral law; but, finding the measure indefinitely postponed, they view him with suspicion, in the Landtag (or Prussian Diet) no less than in the Imperial Parliament. The Catholic Centre cannot forgive this unbending Protestant for his refusal to restore the right to teach to the Jesuit Order, and on the other hand he is not reactionary enough to please the Conservatives. The latter reproached him most bitterly of all, three years ago, for the weakness with which he abandoned his scheme for the financial working of the recent military law and supported the Radical counter-scheme put forward by the Reichstag Committee. In fact, at the beginning of 1914, it seemed that Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg’s days as a minister were numbered, when suddenly the war came to interrupt all party strife, and the roar of the guns drowned the voice of criticism both in Press and in Parliament. Officially, the Chancellor is Foreign Minister for the Empire. But the domain of world-politics as conceived by Prince von Bülow is so vast that his successor, better versed in the handling of home affairs, would have lost himself in it, had he not let himself be guided by an expert professional diplomat invested with the title of Secretary of State. The first of these guides was Baron von Schoen, followed by Herr von Kiderlen-Wächter, and the present Foreign Secretary is Herr von Jagow. On certain occasions, however, the Chancellor was compelled to make a statement on the foreign situation in the Reichstag. He painted his pictures with a broad brush, and presented the leading events of the day in a carefully thought out chiaroscuro well distributed over the canvas. His speeches, which he had learnt by heart, seemed tame and colourless, as is no doubt inevitably the case with this type of literary effort. They were entirely lacking in that singular clearness and note of sincerity that marked the kindred utterances of Sir Edward Grey in the House of Commons.