Yet the Far East is changing with the change in conditions everywhere in modern times, and it is evident that the premises for any conclusion as to German foreign policy there may, at any given moment, be subject to modification.  Partly owing to the growth of Germany’s European influence, and to the increase in her navy which has helped her to it, she is to be found of recent years playing a role in the Far East which would have been unintelligible to the German of the last generation.  There are many Germans to-day, as in Bismarck’s time, who ridicule the notion that the possibilities of trade in Oriental countries justify the national risk now run for it and the national expenditure now made upon it; but it is sometimes forgotten that, apart from the chance of obtaining concessions for the building of railways, for the establishment of banks, for the leasing of mines and working of cotton plantations, there is a large German export of beads, cloth, and, in short, of hundreds of articles which appeal to barbarian or only semi-civilized tastes.

Germany, too, looks hopefully forward to a future in which she will be supplied with the raw material of her manufactures by her colonies, or failing that by her subjects trading abroad in the colonies of other nations.  This is one of the main objects of her Weltpolitik.  As Prince von Buelow said:  “The time has passed when the German left the earth to one neighbour and the sea to another, while he reserved heaven, where pure doctrines are enthroned, to himself;” and again:  “We don’t seek to put anybody in the shade, but we demand our place in the sun;” and the idea finds technical expression in the phrase on which Germany lays so much stress, the “maintenance of the open door.”  Her policy in the Far East, as in Europe, is thus on the whole a commercial one; she seeks there as elsewhere new markets, not new territory.  Accordingly she supports the principle of the status quo in China, and therefore raised no objection to the Anglo-Japanese Agreement of 1902 which, among other objects, secured it.

In January, 1901, the Emperor was called to England by the sudden, and, as it was to prove, fatal illness of his grandmother, Queen Victoria.  His journey to Osborne, where he arrived just in time to be recognized by the dying Queen, and his abandonment of the idea, impressive and almost sacred to a Prussian King and the Prussian people, of being present on his birthday, January 27th, at the bicentenary celebration of the foundation of the Prussian Kingdom, made a deep and sympathetic impression on the people of England.  Usually on State occasions the Emperor does not display a countenance of good humour, or indeed of any sentiment save perhaps that of a sense of dignity; but on the occasion in question, as he rode in the uniform of a British Field-Marshal beside Edward VII, his looks were those of genuine sorrow.  Public sympathy was not lessened when it became known that he had mentioned the pride he felt in being privileged to wear the uniform of two such soldiers of renown as the Duke of Wellington and Lord Roberts; and added that the privilege would be highly estimated by the whole German army.  It was a chivalrous remark, the offspring of a chivalrous disposition.