England has steadily preserved her attitude of superiority everywhere its basis was disappearing. She has been jealous of Germany’s commerce, of her colonial progress. These Germans are to England upstarts who need to be kept in their place and are not to be allowed to have a word in the larger world-policies. Almost every Englishman feels that a German is his social inferior. Such assumptions provoke bumptiousness and self-assertion, which, I do not deny, have at times been evidenced. Just before this war broke out, indeed, the feeling of mutual antagonism seemed to be lessening. The English fleet was welcomed at Kiel, the English trade delegation in Berlin. The press of both countries had softened and sweetened. [Illustration: The Kaiser with the Bürgemeister of Aix-la-Chapelle on the Balcony of the Town Hall] [Illustration: The Emperor at Maneuvers] [Illustration: Duke Albert of Württemberg] [Illustration: Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria] [Illustration: Grand Duke Frederick II of Baden] As for England’s present alliance with Russia against Germany, it is the most monumental act of folly in modern history. Has Britannia been attacked by sclerosis? At home a maudlin sentiment keeps her from enforcing obedience to her laws and abroad she allows her real enemies to pull her about by the nose. It is as though in the middle ages a Henry or an Edward had joined hands with a Genghis Khan or a Timour the Tartar. Can England gain anything whatever by humiliating Germany and furthering Pan-Slavism? A little commercial advantage, possibly, though America will be correspondingly strengthened and the final result will be no better. Britannia, wake up! It is less far from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic than it is from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Gibraltar will soon be as irksome to Pan-Slavism as are now the forts on the Dardanelles. Your own race is made up mainly of Angles and Saxons—all your ideals, all your real interests are far closer to those of the Germans than they are to those of the Russians. The time may come, and very soon, when you are only too glad to throw yourself around Germany’s neck and beg her aid in opposing the hordes from the East. In Russia’s wake are your allies, the Japanese, who now for the first time have taken a hand in European affairs. Japan has been likened by a bright American girl to a man who has never been invited to dinner in certain circles but who at last has invited himself and simply can not be turned out of the house.