to declare that "certain features of German civilization are such as to make it difficult for Englishmen to understand how the whole State does not collapse from sheer rottenness." If that could be said of the Kotze affair, what shall be said of the state of things which has been revealed by Maximilien Harden among others?
Need it be said that the writer of these lines does not desire to represent Germans as a whole as more corrupt than their neighbors? But impartial observers are not of opinion, and very many Germans are not of opinion, that there has been either economic, social, or moral advantage to the German people from the victories of 1870 and the state of regimentation which the sequel has imposed. This is surely evidenced by the actual position of affairs in the German Empire, the complex difficulty with which the German people are now struggling, the growing discontent, the growing influence of those elements which are nurtured in discontent, the growth on one side of radical intransigence and on the other of almost feudal autocracy, the failure to effect normally and easily those democratic developments which have been effected in almost every other European State, the danger for the future which such a situation represents, the precariousness of German finance, the relatively small profit which her population as a whole has received from the greatly increased foreign trade—all this, and much more, confirms that view. England has of late seemed to have been affected with the German superstition. With the curious perversity that marks "patriotic" judgments, the whole tendency of the English has been to make comparisons with Germany to the disadvantage of themselves and