“There is no reason for misunderstanding, or for failure to appreciate, the increasing signs which go to show that public opinion in France is favourable to reconciliation with us, and that this opinion is growing, not only amongst the higher classes in France, but amongst the people.  It is beginning to be recognised that it is to the interest of both nations to shake hands, as is fitting between neighbours, no matter what may have been their former differences.  On the part of Germans the tendency towards an entente has gained in strength since we have noticed the tendency of the French to judge impartially a personality like that of our Emperor, as befits a nation so cultured and richly endowed as the French.”

What say you, veteran soldiers, who fought in the Terrible Year?  What say you, Parisians of the Siege, Frenchmen who have seen the Prussian conqueror dragging his guns and booty along the roads of our France?  What say you, men of Alsace-Lorraine, heroes all? (No matter whether, like some, you have sacrificed situation, home and your little fatherland, so as not to forsake the greater, or, like others, you have consented to become Prussians in order that the land you worship may remain in hands that are still French.) What say you, when our dreadful defeat, our piled-up ruin, and the spoliation of a portion of France, become for a German official organ our former differences?  What words are these in which to speak of 1870-71, of that unforgettable and tragic invasion, of the terrible anguish of our ravished provinces, and what a proof they afford of the great gulf which separates the mind of Germany from that of France!

September 26, 1894.

The German Emperor does not forget that he is before all things a Prussian.  Having administered a reprimand to the nobility, he proceeds to give to the five new fortresses at Koenigsberg, the five greatest family names of the Prussian nobility.

At Thorn he declared—­

“Only they can count upon my royal favour who shall regard themselves as absolutely and entirely Prussian subjects.”  The Germans have not yet realised that the German Empire will be Prussian, before ever Prussia consents to lose herself in a united Germany.

October 28, 1894.

The German Emperor, King of Prussia, with that love of peace for which even Frenchmen are pleased to praise him, is now chiefly occupied in displaying his passion for militarism.  In the case of William II, it will be necessary to modify a hallowed phrase, and to say to him:  “Seeing you in uniform, I guessed that you were no soldier.”