[Footnote 1:  As I write I come across the following, cited from a book of songs composed for German combatants under the title “Der deutsche Zorn":—­

  Wir sind die Meister aller Welt
  In allen ernsten Dingen,
       * * * * *
  Was Man als fremd euch hoechlichst preist
  Um eurer Einfalt Willen,
  Ist deutschen Ursprungs allermeist,
  Und traegt nur fremde Huellen.]

9. Opinion about Germany.

After the crisis of Agadir, M. Georges Bourdon visited Germany to make an inquiry for the Figaro newspaper into the state of opinion there.  His mission belongs to the period between Agadir and the outbreak of the first Balkan war.  He interviewed a large number of people, statesmen, publicists, professors, politicians.  He does not sum up his impressions, and such summary as I can give here is no doubt affected by the emphasis of my own mind.  His book,[1] however, is now translated into English, and the reader has the opportunity of correcting the impression I give him.

Let us begin with Pangermanism, on which M. Bourdon has a very interesting chapter.  He feels for the propaganda of that sect the repulsion that must be felt by every sane and liberal-minded man:—­

Wretched, choleric Pangermans, exasperated and unbalanced, brothers of all the exasperated, wretched windbags whose tirades, in all countries, answer to yours, and whom you are wrong to count your enemies!  Pangermans of the Spree and the Main, who, on the other side of the frontier, receive the fraternal effusions of Russian Pan-Slavism, Italian irredentism, English imperialism, French nationalism!  What is it that you want?

They want, he replies, part of Austria, Switzerland, Flanders, Luxemburg, Denmark, Holland, for all these are “Germanic” countries!  They want colonies.  They want a bigger army and a bigger navy.  “An execrable race, these Pangermans!” “They have the yellow skin, the dry mouth, the green complexion of the bilious.  They do not live under the sky, they avoid the light.  Hidden in their cellars, they pore over treaties, cite newspaper articles, grow pale over maps, measure angles, quibble over texts or traces of frontiers.”  “The Pangerman is a propagandist and a revivalist.”  “But,” M. Bourdon adds, “when he shouts we must not think we hear in his tones the reverberations of the German soul.”  The organs of the party seemed few and unimportant.  The party itself was spoken of with contempt.  “They talk loud,” M. Bourdon was told, “but have no real following; it is only in France that people attend to them.”  Nevertheless, M. Bourdon concluded they were not negligible.  For, in the first place, they have power to evoke the jingoism of the German public—­a jingoism which the violent patriotism of the people, their tradition of victorious force, their education, their dogma of race, continually keep alive.  And, secondly, the Government, when it thinks it useful, turns to the Pangermans for assistance, and lets loose their propaganda in the press.  Their influence thus waxes and wanes, as it is favoured, or not, by authority.  “Like the giant Antaeus,” a correspondent wrote to M. Bourdon, “Pangermanism loses its force when it quits the soil of government.”