Page:The battle of Dorking; (IA battleofdorking00chesrich).pdf/20

xiv politically conscious) material and intellectual vigour. That a group of principalities, obsessed by militarist and petty-aristocratic traditions, should within half a century of their amalgamation form a politically great and united people, could scarcely be expected.

But if not fully organized on the representative lines to which we attach so much importance, Germany presents a united front of intelligence, commercial industry and ambition with which her rapidly increasing population pushes on, eager for new worlds to conquer.

That she demands an "Elizabethan age" of her own is the tragic platitude of our time.

That she is aggrieved that we have had one, while we can only imperfectly (in her estimation) utilize its modern fruits, is her true theoretical casus belli against us.

The immorality of the position consists in her belief that the Sun of Civilization must stand still, the currents of Law and Order run backwards to satisfy her entêtée and unscrupulous jealousy. Englishmen have been so innocent as to believe she would be satisfied by a share, nay an extensive monopoly of the trade we once thought our own. They have urged that the German has all the advantages enjoyed by a native throughout the British Empire, that in spite of a constant agitation by a large and powerful party, no English Government has ever used its power to impose any artificial restraints upon German trade; that