While France, England, and Russia waged wars on a great scale, and while the former Powers acquired enormous extensions of territory, the only military operations undertaken by Germany were against African natives in her dependencies and against China in 1900.  The conduct of the German troops appears, it is true, to have been distinguished, in this latter expedition, by a brutality which stood out in relief even in that orgy of slaughter and loot.  But we must remember that they were specially ordered by their Imperial master, in the name of Jesus Christ, to show no mercy and give no quarter.  Apart from this, it will not be disputed, by any one who knows the facts, that during the first twenty years or so after 1875 Germany was the Power whose diplomacy was the least disturbing to Europe.  The chief friction during that period was between Russia and France and Great Britain, and it was one or other of these Powers, according to the angle of vision, which was regarded as offering the menace of aggression.  If there has been a German plot against the peace of the world, it does not date from before the decade 1890-1900.  The close of that decade marks, in fact, a new epoch in German policy.  The years of peace had been distinguished by the development of industry and trade and internal organization.  The population increased from forty millions in 1870 to over sixty-five millions at the present date.  Foreign trade increased more than ten-fold.  National pride and ambition grew with the growth of prosperity and force, and sentiment as well as need impelled German policy to claim a share of influence outside Europe in that greater world for the control of which the other nations were struggling.  Already Bismarck, though with reluctance and scepticism, had acquired for his country by negotiation large areas in Africa.  But that did not satisfy the ambitions of the colonial party.  The new Kaiser put himself at the head of the new movement, and announced that henceforth nothing must be done in any part of the world without the cognizance and acquiescence of Germany.

Thus there entered a new competitor upon the stage of the world, and his advent of necessity was disconcerting and annoying to the earlier comers.  But is there reason to suppose that, from that moment, German policy was definitely aiming at empire, and was prepared to provoke war to achieve it?  Strictly, no answer can be given to this question.  The remoter intentions of statesmen are rarely avowed to others, and, perhaps, rarely to themselves.  Their policy is, indeed, less continuous, less definite, and more at the mercy of events than observers or critics are apt to suppose.  It is not probable that Germany, any more than any other country in Europe, was pursuing during those years a definite plan, thought out and predetermined in every point.