better self again, and which is once more that “deep, patient Germany” with which I began this essay. She never can be now what she could so easily have been. She could have continued indefinitely to extend from Poland to the Vosges, one vast community, honoured by all for industry and for learning, with a huge commerce, a happy, peaceful, prosperous population, and a Colonial system which, if smaller than that of nations which were centuries older in the field, would at least be remarkable for so short a time. None of these things would the world have grudged her, and in the future as in the past she would have found in the British Dominions and in Great Britain herself an entry for her products as free as if she were herself part of the Empire.

All this must be changed for the worse, and it is just that she should suffer for her sins. The work of sixty years will be destroyed. But will not the spiritual Germany be the stronger and better? We cannot say. We can but hope and wait and wonder. What is sure is that the real Germany, of whom Carlyle spoke, can never be destroyed. Nor would we desire it. Our wrath is not against Germany, but against that Krupp-Kaiser-Junker combination which has brought her to such a deadly pass.