assassin who reigns at Constantinople, he makes his pilgrimage to Palestine, escorted in triumph by the same soldiers who, by order of the Red Sultan, have killed, tortured and tormented Christians?  We shall see him kneeling before the tomb of Christ, surrounded by Turks with bloodstained hands, when he goes to take possession of those much-coveted Holy Places, which shall make him, the prop and stay of the exterminator of Christians, sole arbiter of Christianity in the East.  Can the heavens that look down on Mount Sinai smile on William II, sheltering in the shadow of Turkish bayonets?  When, at Jerusalem, he celebrates the opening of the Prussian Church (whose corner-stone was laid by Frederick III, repentant of his military glory), will not this man of insatiable pride receive some sign of warning from above?  No, it sufficeth perhaps that he should go forward to meet his fate.  Is it not the same for all evil-doers, no matter to what heights they may attain, who only climb that they may be hurled to lower depths?

The challenges that men fling at the ideal structure of the principles of humanity are like the stones that children throw at monuments.  They accumulate and serve to consolidate that which they were meant to destroy.

No one can reproach William II with inactivity, and in this the monarch at Berlin is of one mind with Germany.  He draws the nation after him; it follows blindly on dizzy paths of adventure and the pursuit of wealth.

There is this about Germany to inspire us with fear—­and one wonders how it is that Russia and France have not been so terrified long ago as to make them leave no stone unturned in the Near and Far East, to exorcise the perils with which her earth-hunger threatens them—­that she is just as greedy as England in the politics of business, has just the same jealous desires for financial and commercial expansion, but that, in addition, she has hankerings of another sort:  for glory, for conquests, for the annexations necessary to feed and satisfy her imperious military spirit.  When we consider the innumerable objects for which Germany is working in the Near and Far East, we are compelled to astonishment at the narrow limits of the field of action that she leaves for other nations.

Prior to 1870, every country in Europe possessed its own distinguishing features, its power, its ambition, or its dominating influences.  England was the first, of commercial and industrial nations.  Russia was the great leader of Oriental policy, the predestined heir to Asia.  Austria was the supreme German power.  France was a military nation and at the same time the eldest daughter of the Church; she was the undisputed protector of Catholic Missions all over the world and umpire in most of the great international quarrels.  To-day, Germany is at once all that England, Russia, Austria and France were.  She holds every monopoly, centralises power of every kind, and destroys all power of movement in others.  When shall we have a determined coalition against Germany?  Herein lies the only hope of liberating Europe from the claws of Prussia and recovering something of the lion’s share which William takes to himself.