The great events taking place in the world, the wars in Bohemia, in France, and in Turkey, added a certain, interest to English life because they furnished to the newspapers matter more exciting than any novelist could produce, and in this way gratified the taste for sensation which had been acquired both by rich and poor.  That these events meant anything in particular to the British nation was not likely to be realised while that nation was, in fact, non-existent, and had resolved itself into forty million individuals, each of them living for his own ends, slightly enlarged to include his family, his literary or scientific society, perhaps his cricket club, and on Sunday morning his church or chapel.  There was also a widespread interest in “politics,” by which was meant the particular fads cherished by one’s own caucus to the exclusion of the nation’s affairs, it being more or less understood that the army, the navy, and foreign policy were not to be made political questions.

While forty million English people have thus been spending their lives self-centred, content to make their living, to enjoy life, and to behave kindly to their fellows, there has grown up in Germany a nation, a people of sixty millions, who believe that they belong together, that their country has the first call on them, whose children go to school because the Government that represents the nation bids them, who go for two years to the army or the navy to learn war, because they know that if the nation has to fight it can do so only by their fighting for it.  Their Government thinks it is its business to be always improving the organisation of its sixty millions for security, for knowledge, for instruction, for agriculture, for industry, for navigation.  Thus after forty years of common effort for a common good Germany finds itself the first nation in Europe, more than holding its own in every department of life, and eagerly surveying the world in search of opportunities.

The Englishman, while he has been living his own life and, as I think, improving in many respects, has at the same time been admiring the British Empire, and discovering with pride that a number of new nations have grown up in distant places, formed of people whose fathers or grandfathers emigrated from Great Britain.  He remembers from his school lessons or reads in the newspapers of the greatness of England in past centuries, and naturally feels that with such a past and with so great an Empire existing to-day, his country should be a very great Power.  But as he discovers what the actual performance of Germany is, and becomes acquainted with the results of her efforts in science, education, trade, and industry, and the way in which the influence of the German Government predominates in the affairs of Europe, he is puzzled and indignant, and feels that in some way Great Britain has been surpassed and outdone.