Page:The Second Armada - Hayward - 1871.pdf/20

14 policy as contemptible, its social system as corrupt, its civilization as a counterfeit, its strength as a delusion. Even if this be true, it cannot, they think, be either patriotic or prudent to say it. They do not realize that in England the appetite for political controversy is so great that this national Opposition is indispensable to the public contentment, and that its members have a necessary place in our public economy. So far as the idea of a war with England has entered the mind of any German it has, we believe, been put there by this class of our countrymen. It is not entertained seriously by one out of a hundred thousand, but, at the instigation of such writings as the Battle of Dorking, it may appear in magazine articles or squibs as an instrument for provoking the "selfish islanders" who begin to find that money and twenty miles of sea do not give immunity from all evils. German development and German extension, if there be extension, must be exclusively Continental, and almost certainly inland. Politicians can already anticipate the points where the German Power is most likely to be brought into collision with rivals, and these are far from our neighborhood, and involve antagonisms which in no way concern us. Furthermore, it may be said that Germany, though triumphant, will have enough to do for years to come in watching a vanquished but vindictive enemy on one side and a gigantic military Power on the other. Who will venture to say that even now Frenchmen have made up their minds to pay their five milliards submissively and then to remain models of peacefulness forever? In the elation of victory there may be some empty talking, but we ought to know enough of the