On the subject of
peace, the German mind has long since been fixed in its ideas. One
cannot sum them up better than in the following quotation from a Berlin
newspaper.
"At the Paris Salon in 1895 there was a great picture by Danger
entitled 'The Great Authors of Arbitration and Peace,' depicting all
those, from Confucius and Buddha down to the Tzar Alexander III, who
have laboured in the cause of peace. In a note which explained the
painter's work, it was said to be impossible to depict all the friends
of arbitration and peace. It seems to me that such friends of peace as
William II and Prince Bismarck should not have been forgotten, for, by
the Treaty of Frankfort, they have brought about a lasting peace and
have obtained the power required to maintain it."
Between this German conception of peace and ours, is there not a gulf
that nothing can ever bridge?
October 23, 1898. [12]
William II is in the seventh heaven. One by one he dons his shining
garments, which the eastern sun gladdens with silver and gold. He has
made another trip on his swan, that is to say, on the white
_Hohenzollern_, which carries Lohengrin to the four corners of the
earth. The German Emperor's departure from Venice was a master-stroke
of scenic effects, one of those subversions of history, to which the
eccentric monarch of Berlin is so passionately addicted. Nothing
indeed could have been more original than to make the sons of the
ancient Venetians, hereditary foes of the Turk, welcome a Protestant
monarch who is the friend of the chief slaughterer of Catholics.
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