At the top of the scale, in Berlin society—a very exclusive set, in spite of the constant efforts of the newly rich to gain admittance—I met some sincere pacifists. The old German nobility, which figures in that Golden Book the Almanac de Gotha, is naturally more cosmopolitan than the country squires, and it gladly keeps up family connections with the foreign aristocracy. This class did not appear to have any hatred for the French or for the English. Such hatred was rather to be found among the middle classes: it was the envy that mushroom opulence feels for old-established wealth. The personal feelings of a few Serene Highnesses, however, counted for very little, and the same may be said of those great lords, courtiers, but not counsellors, to His Imperial Majesty, who applauded everything that he did, and offered him nothing but flattery and obeisance. II. The bellicose minority, more active and strenuous, included, in the first place, the war party of which I have spoken in Chapter III. But by the side of the violently aggressive Germans there were more lukewarm spirits; by the side of the Pan-Germans and the disciples of Von der Goltz and Bernhardi there were men of a philosophic cast, who saw war coming as an inevitable necessity, a crisis decreed by fate, essential to the well-being and development of the Empire. The shades of difference among them were as varied as the colours in a prism. Among the nobles of South Germany, for instance, the military traditions of their families were tinged with regret for the old days of independence and with a certain ill-feeling towards Prussia. It was the same with the aristocracy of Hanover, an impoverished caste (apart from a few great landowners), devoted to the profession of arms, and still loyal to the memory of their generous treatment by the English dynasty, which they liked to contrast with the stinginess of the Hohenzollerns. In the Rhine provinces, the former contact with France had left unmistakable traces upon the upper classes, among whom French culture did not arouse the same scorn and detestation as in the north and east of the Empire. For all these patricians a fresh war—in other words fresh victories—meant an even more complete triumph for Prussian supremacy, and an end of all autonomy for the smaller States. If the heart of the soldier in them beat faster at the thought of Germany’s latter-day glory, the eyes of the provincial grew sombre as they saw the shadows threaten to engulf all that was left to them of a still cherished past.