GERMANY: "Farewell, Madam, and if--" FRANCE: "Ha! We shall meet again!" (_Sept. 27, 1873._)] In 1905 the Kaiser was "The Sower of Tares," the enemy of Europe. In 1910 he was Teutonising and Prussifying Turkey; in 1911 discovering to his discomfort that the Triple Entente was a solid fact. And in September, 1913, he was shown as unable to dissemble his disappointment at the defeat of the German-trained Turkish army by the Balkan League. [Illustration: THE STORY OF FIDGETY WILHELM (Up-to-date Version of "Struwwelpeter") "Let me see if Wilhelm can Be a little gentleman; Let me sec if he is able To sit still for once at table!" "But Fidgety Will He _won't_ sit still." Just like any bucking horse. "Wilhelm! We are getting cross!" _Feb._ 1, 1896.] [Illustration: THE SOWER OF TARES (_After Millais, Aug. 23, 1905_)] So, too, with Turkey. From 1876 to 1913 Mr. Punch's cartoons on the Near East are one continuous and illuminating commentary on Lord Salisbury's historic admission that we had "backed the wrong horse," culminating in the cartoon "Armageddon: a Diversion" in December, 1912, when Turkey says "Good! If only all these other Christian nations get at one another's throats I may have a dog's chance yet." Throughout the entire series the Sick Man remains cynical and impenitent, blowing endless bubble-promises of reform from his hookah, bullying and massacring his subject races whenever he had the chance, playing off the jealousies of the Powers, one against the other, to further his own sinister ends. [Illustration: SOLID GERMANY: "Donnerwetter! It's rock. I thought it was going to be paper." (_Aug. 2, 1911_)] Yet Mr. Punch does not wish to lay claim to any special prescience or wisdom, for, in spite of lucid intervals of foresight, we were all deceived by Germany. Nearly fifty years of peace had blinded us to fifty years of relentless preparation for war. But if we were deceived by the treachery of Germany's false professions, we had no monopoly of illusion. Germany made the huge mistake of believing that we would stand out--that we dared not support France in face of our troubles and divisions at home. She counted on the pacific influences in a Liberal Cabinet, on the looseness of the ties which bound us to our Dominions, on the "contemptible" numbers of our Expeditionary Force, on the surrender of Belgium. She had willed the War; the tragedy of Sarajevo gave her the excuse. There is no longer any need to fix the responsibility. The roots of the world conflict which seemed obscure to a neutral statesman have long been laid bare by the avowals of the chief criminal. The story is told in the Memoir of Prince Lichnowsky, in the revelations of Dr. Muehlon of Krupp's, in the official correspondence that has come to light since the Revolution of Berlin. Germany stands before the bar of civilisation as the _reus confitens_ in the cause of light against darkness, freedom against world enslavement.