The illogical Empire lies alongside of the illogical Republic.  They have a line of demarkation which, though drawn on the map, is not drawn on the ground.  The great antagonistic facts touch each other through a long line of territorial extent, but the ethnic diversity does not permit political union.  The Teuton and the Gaul continue to touch, but they are not one, and cannot be.  Two neighbors living between Verdun and Metz are only a quarter of a mile apart.  They cultivate their grounds in the same manner, raise the same fruits, have vines growing on the two sides of the same trellis.  They speak the same language, exchange gossip and poultry; but their children do not go to the same school!  One of them is a French democrat; the other, a German imperialist!

The reason for this reversal of expectation, by which the anticipated institutions of France are found in Germany and those of Germany in France, is this:  It seems to be a law of human progress that mankind moves forward by reactions against its own preceding conditions; that is, Progress disappoints History by doing the other thing!  The French race has done the other thing; and so has the German race!  They who should have been logically the imperialists of Western Europe are the republicans and democrats.  They who should have been logically the democrats and republicans of Europe—­who should have converted Germania into the greatest democracy of the world—­have accepted instead the most absolute empire.  The phrase “German Empire” is, we think, the greatest paradox of modern history; and the phrase “French Republic” is another like it.  But history has decreed it so; and the reason is that human progress works out its highest results by doing the other thing!

But this philosophical speculation or interpretation does not trouble either the French or the Germans.  They both seem to rejoice at what has come to pass, and do not trouble themselves about the logistics of history.  They celebrate their quarter centennials, the one for the Republic, and the other for the Empire, with profound enthusiasm, shouting, Vive for the one and Hoch for the other with an impulsive patriotism that has come down to them with the blood of their respective races from before the Christian era!

Great Battles.

TRAFALGAR.

Lord Byron in his celebrated apostrophe to the ocean could hardly omit a reference to the most destructive conflict of naval warfare within the present century.  In one of his supreme stanzas he reserves Trafalgar for the climax: 

    “The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
      Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake
    And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
      The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
      Their clay creator the vain title take
    Of lord of thee and arbiter of war,—­
      These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
    They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
    Alike the Armada’s pride or spoils of Trafalgar.”