The somewhat forced enthusiasm with which the introduction of the Defence Levy was hailed in Berlin drawing-rooms was speedily quenched after the Reichstag vote, and black looks appeared on all sides as the first term for payment drew near. The growing burdens exacted by the army and navy now made their weight felt everywhere, and caused a general demand for some limit to the constant advance of armaments and taxation. Yet the people saw no chance of relief except as the result of a war. “... That the outbreak of hostilities may be looked upon as a deliverance,” says the secret report already quoted. This was the idea that was gradually making its way into the German mind. On the day after mobilization, while having a talk with the Bavarian minister, I expressed my surprise at the fact that the war-demonstrations of the previous evening had been noisier in Munich than in Berlin. “Isn’t it perfectly natural?” he replied. “We are crushed by a weight of taxation, ordinary and extraordinary. The moment seems favourable. France and Russia are not ready. The Bavarians think it better that war should come than that the present intolerable state of things should continue.” Not only did the military clique make capital of this discontent for the furtherance of their ends, but, we may surmise, the Conservatives exploited it for a political purpose which is not hard to guess. A successful war was the only way of stopping the downward rush of the Empire along the democratic slope, and of regaining the mastery of the Reichstag for the moderate parties. A victorious monarch, invested with a halo of dazzling glory by his subjects throughout all Germany, could allow himself anything. Was it not after a series of military triumphs that Bismarck had overcome the last resistance of the separatists? But the great man had made the mistake—a mistake for which his successors paid dear—of introducing universal suffrage for the elections to the Reichstag. Little by little, the popular vote was threatening to bring forth a hideous monster, a Parliament in which the majority would be led by the advocates of a social revolution. The Conservatives, in spite of a promise made by the Emperor, had managed to prevent an electoral reform for the Prussian Chamber of Deputies. We shall hardly overrate the daring of their leaders, if we credit them with the design of inducing William II., after the victory, to modify the 1871 constitution in a reactionary spirit.