“Gentlemen!  This fine ovation springs from the feeling that you are proud of having done your duty by your country.  In the words of our great Chancellor (Bismarck), who said that if the Germans were once put in the saddle they would soon learn to ride, you can ride and you will ride, and ride down, any one who opposes us, especially when all classes and creeds stand fast together.  Do not let this hour of triumph pass as a moment of patriotic enthusiasm, but keep to the road on which you have started.”

The speech closed with a verse from Kleist’s “Prince von Homburg,” a favourite monarchist drama of the Emperor’s, conveying the idea that good Hohenzollern rule had knocked bad Social-Democratic agitation into a cocked hat.

The result of the elections enabled the Chancellor to form a new “bloc” party in Parliament, consisting of conservatives and Liberals, on whose united aid he could rely in promoting national measures.  As the Chancellor said, he did not expect Conservatives to turn into Liberals and Liberals into Conservatives overnight nor did he expect the two parties to vote solid on matters of secondary interest and importance; but he expected them to support the Government on questions that concerned the welfare of the whole Empire.

Before 1907, the year we have now reached, Franco-German and Anglo-German relations had long varied from cool to stormy.  They had not for many years been at “set-fair,” nor have they apparently reached that halcyon stage as yet.  During the Moroccan troubles it was generally believed that on two or three occasions war was imminent either between France and Germany or between Germany and England.  That there was such a danger at the time of M. Delcasse’s retirement from the conduct of French foreign affairs just previous to the Algeciras Conference is a matter of general conviction in all countries; but there is no publicly known evidence that danger of war between England and Germany has been acute at any time of recent years.  Nor at any time of recent years has the bulk of the people in either country really desired or intended war.  There has been international exasperation, sometimes amounting to hostility, continuously; but it was largely due to Chauvinism on both sides, and was in great measure counteracted by the efforts of public-spirited bodies and men in both countries, by international visits of amity and goodwill, and by the determination of both the English and German Governments not to go to war without good and sufficient cause.

Among the most striking testimonies to this determination was the visit of the Emperor to England in November, 1907.