And these are the people, mind you, who would have said that we were trying to provoke them if, faithful to the memory of our defeat, as they are to the memory of their victory, we had abstained from going to Kiel to sing the glories of the conqueror.  Like William II, their Sovereign and Lord, Germany will never admit that our actions should be a counterpart to their own, even though such actions should include recognition of their former victories.  They wish to impose upon us, not only the acceptance of defeat, but a definite recognition of their conquest, a final sacrifice of our ancient rights, together with unlimited scope for their new ambitions.  The German Emperor, King of Prussia, has never made two consecutive speeches in which one did not contain some threat for us, long or short-dated.  If one were to add together all the words of peace which William has spoken and all his war-like utterances, the mass of the latter would irretrievably swamp all the rest.

October 28, 1895. [12]

His Majesty the German Emperor, King of Prussia, seems to be quite incapable of understanding that, in love as in hate, it is wisest not to be overfond of repeating either the word “always” or the word “never.”  It is the intention of William II, that Germany should for ever and ever remain the gate of Hell for France, and he has continued to din into our ears his lasciate speranza every year for the last twenty-five.  He never misses an opportunity of showing us France humiliated and Germany magnified and glorified.  The monument at Woerth has been unveiled with such a noisy demonstration, that it has for ever banished from our minds the figure, softened by suffering, of that Emperor Frederick, who had made us forget “Unser Fritz” of blood-stained memory.  William II noisily recalls to our mind the conqueror, when we wished to see in him only the martyr.  This is what the German Emperor now tells the world at large:  “Before the statue of this great Conqueror, let us swear to keep what he conquered, to defend this territory against all comers and to keep it German, by the aid of God and our good German sword.”

To do him justice, William II has rendered to us patriots a most conspicuous service.  At a word he has set us back in the position from which the luke-warm, the dreamers, and the cowards were trying to drive us.  By saying that Alsace-Lorraine is to remain Prussian for ever and for ever, he has compelled France either to accept her defeat for centuries to come, or to protest against it every hour of her national existence.

November 2, 1895.

William II suffers from a curious kind of obsession, which makes him want to astonish the world by his threats, every time that his recruits take the oath.  On the present occasion he said, that the army must not only remember the Watch on the Rhine but also the Watch on the Vistula.

[1] La Nouvelle Revue, April 1, 1894, “Letters on Foreign Policy.”