first and then Germany” would have been the verdict of nine men out of ten.  But then occurred two events which steadied the easy-going Briton, and made him look more intently and with a more questioning gaze at his distant cousin over the water.  Those two events were the Boer war and the building of the German fleet.  The first showed us, to our amazement, the bitter desire which Germany had to do us some mischief, the second made us realize that she was forging a weapon with which that desire might be fulfilled.

The Boer War and Germany.

We are most of us old enough to remember the torrent of calumny and insult which was showered upon us in the day of our temporary distress by the nation to whom we had so often been a friend and an ally.  It is true that other nations treated us little better, and yet their treatment hurt us less.  The difference as it struck men at the time may be summarized in this passage from a British writer of the period.

“But it was very different with Germany,” he says.  “Again and again in the world’s history we have been the friends and the allies of these people.  It was so in the days of Marlborough, in those of the Great Frederick, and in those of Napoleon.  When we could not help them with men we helped them with money.  Our fleet has crushed their enemies.  And now, for the first time in history, we have had a chance of seeing who were our friends in Europe, and nowhere have we met more hatred and more slander than from the German press and the German people.  Their most respectable journals have not hesitated to represent the British troops—­troops every bit as humane and as highly disciplined as their own—­not only as committing outrages on person and property, but even as murdering women and children.

“At first this unexpected phenomenon merely surprised the British people, then it pained them, and finally, after two years of it, it has roused a deep, enduring anger in their minds.”

He goes on to say:  “The continued attacks upon us have left an enduring feeling of resentment, which will not and should not die away in this generation.  It is not too much to say that five years ago a complete defeat of Germany in a European war would have certainly caused British intervention.  Public sentiment and racial affinity would never have allowed us to see her really go to the wall.  And now it is certain that in our lifetime no British guinea and no soldier’s life would under any circumstances be spent for such an end.  That is one strange result of the Boer war, and in the long run it is possible that it may prove not the least important.”

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