The object of these last was, as usual, the young monarch's unhealthy
craving for making dupes. To this I shall return later on. Let us first
examine the causes of William's sudden impulses.
He has acquired, and is teaching his people to acquire, the taste and
habit of sudden and unexpected happenings. It having been the habit of
Bismarck to speculate on things foreseen, it was inevitable that his
jealous adversary should speculate on things unforeseen. Moreover, the
King-Emperor is dominated by that law of compensation, from which neither
men nor things can escape, and from which it follows logically that
Germany, after having profited by methods of continuity, is now condemned
to suffer, in the same proportion, her trials of instability.
In determining upon the journey of his august mother to Paris, the
Emperor took no risks other than those which pleased him, and which
served the purposes of his grudges and his policy. In the first place,
this journey would serve for a moment to divert attention in Germany from
a policy which the great industrials and the workmen, the party of
progress and the conservatives, all unite in condemning. In the next
place, Berlin, having for a long time made ready to be amiable to Paris,
was bound to resent all the more acutely any failure to reciprocate her
kind advances. These results could not fail to be favourable to the vote
of credits for military purposes, which are always the last credits asked
for by the Government (whether under Bismarck or under Caprivi) and which
are always voted under stress of an appeal to the eternal but utterly
non-existent dangers, that are supposed to threaten Germany from France.
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