We have suggested that the telegram was partly due to a certain element of chivalry in the Emperor’s character.  The Emperor was well acquainted with other forms of government and other social systems besides his own, and though a Hohenzollern could put himself in the position of the chief of the little Boer republic, threatened as he was with annihilation by a mighty and powerful opponent.  Moreover, there is always to be remembered the sympathy of view, particularly of religious view, that existed in the two men as regarded their attitude and duties to their respective “folk.”  The President had appealed to the Emperor for help.  The Emperor had had to refuse it, but had wired that he would do all he could “diplomatically.”  He knew that this was but a poor sort of assistance, but it was something, and when the Raid occurred he gave the diplomatic assistance he had promised by sending a telegram of congratulation.  In any case—­tempi passati.  Foreign policy is not concerned with sympathies or antipathies, and the whole episode should be ignored, or, better still, forgotten.

The Kruger telegram, it turned out, was to usher in a long period of tension between two countries of the same race, singularly alike in their ideals of whatever is sound and praiseworthy in Christian civilization, and almost equally mutual admirers of the fundamental features of each other’s national character.  Unfortunately, along with these fundamental features of the English and German national characters, the love of money, the auri sacra fames, has to be reckoned with, and in the race of nations for wealth and power the fundamental qualities are apt, for a time, to be overborne and cease to act.  The rise of the modern German Empire to power and prosperity, and the new world-situation thus created, largely by the Emperor, is at the bottom of Anglo-German tension.  As a main contributory cause of both the power and the prosperity, was the creation of the German navy at the period of which we write.

The following is a parable which he who runs may read:—­

In a certain town, with a large and heterogeneous population, there was once a “monster” shop.  The firm (there were three partners) had been established for hundreds of years, had thrown out several branches, and by hard work, enterprise, and honesty had acquired a leading position in the trade of the town:  so much so, indeed, that as time went on it had also come to do the carriage and delivery of goods for most of the smaller shops, though some of these were large houses themselves and the majority of them in a fair way of business.  The smaller shops were naturally a little jealous of the “monster,” and it was the dream of every owner of them to enlarge his premises and become the proprietor of an equally great emporium as the “monster.”  One day, therefore, a little cluster of shops, at some distance from the “monster,” suddenly resolved to form a combination, and