The Third Republic of France has passed its twenty-fifth anniversary, and the German Empire has just celebrated its semi-jubilee.  The French held their fete in September of 1895, and on the eighteenth of the following January all the Fatherland shouted greetings to the grandson of old Wilhelm the Kaiser.  The Gaul and the Teuton have thus agreed to be happy coincidently; but for very different reasons!  The Gaul has his Republic and the Teuton his Empire.  Side by side on the map lie the two great powers, representing in their history and present aspect one of the strongest contrasts to be found in human annals.

What the German Empire is we may permit the Emperor himself, in his recent anniversary address, to explain.  His speech shows that Germany, of all civilized nations, has gone furthest in the direction of unqualified imperialism.  The utterances of Emperor William surpass the speeches of the Czar himself, in avowing all the pretensions and fictions of monarchy in the Middle Ages.  The Hohenzollern potentate openly makes the pretence of governing his subjects by rights and prerogatives in nowise derived from the people, but wholly derived from himself and his grandfather.  Why should Germany be an Empire and France a Republic?  How could such an amazing historical result come into the world?  The French Republic and the new Empire of Germany were not made by generals and kings and politicians in 1870-71.  Indeed, nothing is made by the strutters who are designated with such titles.  The two great powers having their centres at Berlin and Paris have their roots as deep down as the subsoil of the ages.  They grew out of antecedents older than the Crusades, older than Charlemagne, older than Augustus and the Christ.  They came by law—­even if the result has surprised the expectation of mankind.

When Caesar made his conquest of Europe, he found the country north of the Alps in the possession of two races—­both Aryan.  These two races were as unlike then as they are now.  The Gauls west of the Rhine were proper material for the reception of Roman rule; but the Germans beyond the Rhine were not receptive of any rule but their own.  The Gallic races became Romanized.  Gaul was a part of the Roman Empire and reasoning from the facts, we should have expected the Gaulish nations to develop into the imperial form.

For like reason we should expect the Teutonic races to develop into the greatest democracy of the modern world.  Contrary to this double expectation, we have a French Republic and a German Empire.  In 1870 the Gallic race became suddenly democratic, and at the same time the Germans became the greatest imperialists among civilized mankind!  The German Empire has arisen where we should have expected a democracy; and the French Republic has arisen where we should have expected an Empire.