The whole Germany of tradition displayed itself before the eyes of the Tzarewitch, all its treacherous appearance of good nature, all its dishonest methods, composed of a mixture of vanity and apparent simplicity, whose object it is to make people believe in a sort of unconsciousness of great strength.  The German Emperor made an appeal for a union of princes to resist the restless democracy of our times, and repeated it with urgency, and in the usual stock phrases.  In a word, William II laid under contribution, to charm the son of the Tzar, all his arts and spells of fascination.  Why wonder that he succeeded, when we remember that M. Jules Simon, a French Republican, member of the Government of National Defence in 1870, came back from Berlin singing the praises of the King of Prussia?  Also, that the entire Press of our country, with the sole exception of the Nouvelle Revue, was wont, at the commencement of William’s reign, to speak with sympathy of the genial character of the “young Emperor,” to praise his schemes of social reform, and to express its belief in the superiority of a mind which, as a matter of fact, is remarkable only for its excesses and disorder?  But all Germany, like M. Jules Simon and the French Press, will find out the truth.  The country may have gone into ecstasies over the first acts and first speeches of its young sovereign, but it will soon learn to know how little connection there is between the words and assurances of William of Hohenzollern and his deeds.

At the outset, during the sojourn of the Tzarewitch at Berlin, whilst he was being carefully coddled by the Emperor, the chancellor, Von Caprivi (who boasts of having no initiative of his own and of acting only under the orders of his master), was inspiring accusations, and making them himself before the military commission, charging the war party in Russia with secretly plotting against Germany.  One would like to know where the war party in Russia can possibly be at the present moment?

At the same time that William II was endeavouring to recover and restore amicable relations with the Tzar, he had every intention of carrying through his schemes of military re-organisation and the increase of the army, which, as Von Caprivi was wont to say after His Majesty, constitute essential safeguards against a Russian invasion.  Now, the good Germans welcomed the son of Alexander III; they meant to prove to William II how useless they considered the increase of the army, inasmuch as the Tzar, with whom lies the final arbitrament of war, had shown his desire for peace by sending his son to Berlin.  The Tzar, whose statecraft is great and profound, had clearly foreseen what the German people would think of the presence of his son in their midst; he showed them by this means that the increase of the army is useless, and that all the agitation and complications which William provokes, the oppositions and the struggles which he himself creates amongst the forces that he lets loose, give rise to dangers, far greater than any with which Russia could ever threaten Germany.