It is one of the commonplaces of this question that in the past the Germans have always been loyal subjects and never made a revolution.  It is alleged that there has never been a German republic.  That is by no means conclusively true.  The nucleus of Swiss freedom was the German-speaking cantons about the Lake of Lucerne; Tell was a German, and he was glorified by the German Schiller.  No doubt the Protestant reformation was largely a business of dukes and princes, but the underlying spirit of that revolt also lay in the German national character.  The Anabaptist insurrection was no mean thing in rebellions, and the history of the Dutch, who are, after all, only the extreme expression of the Low German type, is a history of the most stubborn struggle for freedom in Europe.  This legend of German docility will not bear close examination.  It is true that they are not given to spasmodic outbreaks, and that they do not lend themselves readily to intrigues and pronunciamentos, but there is every reason to suppose that they have the heads to plan and the wills to carry out as sound and orderly and effective a revolution as any people in Europe.  Before the war drove them frantic, the German comic papers were by no means suggestive of an abject worship of authority and royalty for their own sakes.  The teaching of all forms of morality and sentimentality in schools produces not only belief but reaction, and the livelier and more energetic the pupil the more likely he is to react rather than accept.

Whatever the feelings of the old women of Germany may be towards the Kaiser and his family, my impression of the opinion of Germans in general is that they believed firmly in empire, Kaiser and militarism wholly and solely because they thought these things meant security, success, triumph, more and more wealth, more and more Germany, and all that had come to them since 1871 carried on to the nth degree....  I do not think that all the schoolmasters of Germany, teaching in unison at the tops of their voices, will sustain that belief beyond the end of this war.

At present every discomfort and disappointment of the German people is being sedulously diverted into rage against the Allies, and particularly against the English.  This is all very well as long as the war goes on with a certain effect of hopefulness.  But what when presently the beam has so tilted against Germany that an unprofitable peace has become urgent and inevitable?  How can the Hohenzollern suddenly abandon his pose of righteous indignation and make friends with the accursed enemy, and how can he make any peace at all with us while he still proclaims us accursed?  Either the Emperor has to go to his people and say, “We promised you victory and it is defeat,” or he has to say, “It is not defeat, but we are going to make peace with these Russian barbarians who invaded us, with the incompetent English who betrayed us, with all these degenerate and contemptible races you so righteously hate and despise, upon such terms that we shall never be able to attack them again.  This noble and wonderful war is to end in this futility and—­these graves.  You were tricked into it, as you were tricked into war in 1870—­but this time it has not turned out quite so well.  And besides, after all, we find we can continue to get on with these people.” ...