To-day he is the master of Europe; but let
the power of the Kaiser be what it may (and it is a power no more
capable of honesty than that of Bismarck, who lied without ceasing,
forfeited without ceasing his honour, and accepted responsibility for
crime), whatever conquests hereafter William II may achieve, even
should we be defeated again, we shall be able to stand up before him
and to his face to say, "You will never achieve greatness!" Material
greatness turns again to dust, like all matter, but moral greatness is
eternal, an intangible thing, which surrounds men, invisible, and which
emanates from the best amongst them.
We will leave to history, which shall surely record it, the judgment of
_human_ men, of real peace-lovers, concerning William II, concerning
this protector of the Red Sultan, this renegade and denier of his
faith, who has sold his soul in order to govern the world through evil,
through trickery, through force and through war. You have only to read
the German legends, to analyse the souls of the traditional heroes of
Germany, to see that they are indeed much more closely allied to the
Turks (who have only understood Islamism under its aspects of conquest)
than they are to the traditions which Europe has inherited from Greece
and from her daughters, Rome and Byzantium.
The struggle of to-day lies between these two spirits: one the
barbarian spirit, the spirit of conquest, which knows no other law but
force, the spirit which subdues and kills, represented by Turkey and by
Germany; the other, the spirit of civilisation, of love, which knows no
other law than the right, the spirit which emancipates and vivifies,
the spirit of Greece, from which European civilisation is drawn,
excepting always that of the Germans and Turks.
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