Is it
not the same for all evil-doers, no matter to what heights they may
attain, who only climb that they may be hurled to lower depths?
The challenges that men fling at the ideal structure of the principles
of humanity are like the stones that children throw at monuments. They
accumulate and serve to consolidate that which they were meant to
destroy.
No one can reproach William II with inactivity, and in this the monarch
at Berlin is of one mind with Germany. He draws the nation after him;
it follows blindly on dizzy paths of adventure and the pursuit of
wealth.
There is this about Germany to inspire us with fear--and one wonders
how it is that Russia and France have not been so terrified long ago as
to make them leave no stone unturned in the Near and Far East, to
exorcise the perils with which her earth-hunger threatens them--that
she is just as greedy as England in the politics of business, has just
the same jealous desires for financial and commercial expansion, but
that, in addition, she has hankerings of another sort: for glory, for
conquests, for the annexations necessary to feed and satisfy her
imperious military spirit. When we consider the innumerable objects
for which Germany is working in the Near and Far East, we are compelled
to astonishment at the narrow limits of the field of action that she
leaves for other nations.
Prior to 1870, every country in Europe possessed its own distinguishing
features, its power, its ambition, or its dominating influences.
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