Taken, then, as a whole, the Emperor's foreign policy has been, as it is to-day, almost entirely economic and commercial. The same might, no doubt, be said in a general way of all civilized Occidental governments, but there never has yet been a country of which the foreign policy was so completely directed by the economic and mercantile spirit as modern Germany. The foreign policy of England has also been commercial, but it has been influenced at times by noble sentiment and splendid imagination as well. The first question the German statesman, in whose vocabulary of state-craft the word imagination does not occur, asks himself and other nations when any event happens abroad to demand imperial attention is--how does it affect Germany's economic and commercial interests, future as well as present? What is Germany going to get out of it? The manner in which on various occasions during the reign the question has been propounded has excited criticism bordering on indignation abroad, but it should be recognized that it has invariably been answered in the long run by Germany in the spirit of compromise and conciliation. However, all civilized nations nowadays see that war is the least satisfactory method of adjusting national quarrels, and the tendency is happily growing among them to pursue a commercial, an economic policy, a policy of peace. This is true Weltpolitik, true world-policy. Time was when wars were the unavoidable result of conditions then prevailing; but conditions have greatly altered, and war, as there is abundant evidence to show, is to-day, in almost every case, avoidable by all civilized peoples. Formerly war deranged and disturbed at any rate for the time being, the commerce and industries of the countries engaged in it; to-day, as Mr. Norman Angell demonstrates, it deranges and disturbs commerce and industry all over the world. The derangement and disturbance may, it is true, be only temporary; but there is, as always, the loss of life among the youth of the countries engaged in war to be remembered. Granted that it is pleasant and honourable to die for one's country. Let us hope the time is coming when it will be equally pleasant and honourable to live for it.