And how is it with us? An admission must be made at a critical moment. That moment has arrived. In the course of time the sober and earnest speech and thought of the old Prussians has become remote. Let us beware of overconfidence in ourselves. We have a forty years’ peace behind us, which is not very good for the German Army. So much for us. And what will victory bring us? The loss of our Navy and our Colonies, and our own destruction only avoided by a sea of blood. What will happen when the people return home, awakened as to their own character and chastened by a fruitless fight? We speak of a favourable result. And if this does not occur? If Germany does not win in the next war shall we be bled to death? Bismarck said this, and let us admit it openly: “In this war we have nothing to gain and everything to lose.” He who brings about this war and who does not try to obviate the danger is perpetrating the greatest outrage on the German nation. He is endangering the creation of Bismarck and his King; he is playing with loaded dice. Here was a voice crying in the wilderness—a prophet without honour in his own country! But how true are his words! CHAPTER XIII HOME LIFE—LADY ROSCOE—WOODCOTE LODGE—PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS—DEATH In 1863 Roscoe married the lady whom he had first met in his aunt Crompton’s drawing-room in Hyde Park Square—Lucy, the youngest member of the family of Edmund Potter, Esq., M.P. for Carlisle, a well-known Manchester merchant and a friend and co-worker of Bright and Cobden.