Such, in a comparatively few sentences, is the political state of things in Germany. It might indeed be expressed in still fewer words, as follows: Heaven gave the royal house of Hohenzollern, as a present, a folk. The Hohenzollerns gave the folk, as a present, a parliament, a power to make laws without the power of executing them. The Social Democrats broke off from the folk and took an anti-Hohenzollern and anti-popular attitude, and the folk in their Parliament divided into parties to pass the time, and--of course--make laws. This may seem to be treating an important subject with levity. It is intended merely as a statement of the facts. The system in Germany works well, to an Englishman indeed surprisingly so. In England there is no Heaven-appointed king; all the powers of the King, both that of making laws and of administering them, have long ago been taken by the people from the King and entrusted by them to a parliament, the majority of whom, called the Government, represent the majority of the electing voters. In the case of Germany the folk have surrendered some of what an Englishman would term their "liberties," for example, the right to govern, to the King, to be used for the common good; whereas in the case of England, the people do not think it needful to surrender any of their liberties, least of all the government of their country, in order to attain the same end. Thus, while the German Emperor and the German folk have the same aims as the English King and the English people, the common weal and the fair fame of their respective countries, the two monarchs and the two peoples have agreed on almost contrary ways of trying to secure them. The political system of Germany has had to be sketched introductorily as for the Englishman, a necessary preliminary to an understanding of the German Emperor's character and policy. One of the most important results of the character and policy is the state of Anglo-German relations; and the writer is convinced that if the character and policy were better and more generally known there would be no estrangement between the two countries, but, much more probably, mutual respect and mutual good-will. With the growth of this knowledge, the writer is tempted to believe, would cease a delusion that appears to exist in the minds, or rather the imaginations, of two great peoples, the delusion that the highest national interests of both are fundamentally irreconcilable, and that the policies of their Governments are fundamentally opposed.