July 12, 1898. [7]

The unseverable unity of Pan-Germanism is the ruling formula with the Germans of Austria.  Are they not continually threatening the Hapsburgs that they will secede if the supremacy of their German minority over the Slav majority is not maintained?  They do not even take the trouble to lower their voices when they cry to the neighbouring Empire:  “Before very long we shall be yours.”

Since the defeat of France, Germany’s ambitions have grown to a height out of all proportion even to the importance of her conquest.  On all sides she has cast covetous eyes, stretched out her grasping hand in all directions.  For only France, while still intact, possessed the courage to protect other nations from the all-consuming German appetite.

That Germany should have captured the monstrous friendship of a French Minister for the Christian-slaying Sultan!  Can any one possibly find any absolution, any excuses, for such a deplorable mismanagement of our material and moral interests in the East?

Gradually, unless something can be done to check these unfortunate tendencies of our diplomacy, William II will announce that the time has come for the apotheosis, a la turque, of a Protestant Emperor.

And then, all of a sudden after this gradual preparation, the Catholics and the Holy Places of the Orthodox will be delivered over to one of the only forces of Christianity, to that which gives absolution for murder and protects the slayer of Christians.

Race, nationality, politics, trade, influence and guarantees, all may be summed up in Oriental countries in a single word:  Religion!  Must, then, a government seek to advance the cause of its State religion, not from religious conviction, but in the spirit which seeks to retain the privileges and wealth it has acquired and its powers of self-defence?

Our new Minister of Foreign Affairs understands these things—­he has pondered over them long:  will he not, therefore, seek and find in the complexities of Oriental policy the factor of immediate and personal advantage which is calculated to minister to boundless self-conceit?  He will endeavour quietly to untie the least compact of the knots tied at Stamboul and Berlin; he will replace them by other knots, tied more closely by himself.  He will display the cleverness of those who make no effort to be clever, and he will not lack clearness of sight and precision for the simple reason that he loves his country better than himself.

July 25, 1898. [8]

The high approval bestowed by Germany upon all the subterfuges of the diplomacy of Abdul Hamid, the bankruptcy of the European Concert, the embarrassment in which each one of the Governments that compose this strange Concert finds itself when confronted with the machiavelism of the Turk, all these have produced a situation intolerable for those statesmen who have any regard for the dignity of their country.