222 IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE-XIX 



with serious intestine tendencies to anarchy, must, if she 

 is to live, have the best possible military organization and 

 a central power strong to curb all the forces of the empire, 

 and quick to hurl them. Moreover, these speeches, which 

 seemed so absurd to the average American, hardly aston 

 ished any one who had lived long in Germany, and espe 

 cially in Prussia. The doctrines laid down by the young 

 monarch to the recruits were, after all, only what they 

 had heard a thousand times from pulpit and school desk, 

 and are a logical result of Prussian history and geog 

 raphy. Something, too, must be allowed to a young man 

 gifted, energetic, suddenly brought into so responsible a 

 position, looking into and beyond his empire, seeing hostile 

 nations north, south, east, and west, with elements of un 

 reason fermenting within its own borders, and feeling that 

 the only reliance of his country is in the good right arms 

 of its people, in their power of striking heavily and 

 quickly, and in unquestioning obedience to authority. 



In the history of American opinion at this time there 

 was one comical episode. The strongholds of opinion 

 among us friendly to Germany have been, for the last 

 sixty years, our universities and colleges, in so many 

 of which are professors and tutors who, having studied 

 in Germany, have brought back a certain love for the Ger 

 man fatherland. To them there came in those days a 

 curious tractate by a little-known German professor one 

 of the most curious satires in human history. To all ap 

 pearance it was simply a biographical study of the young 

 Koman emperor Caligula. It displayed the advantages 

 he had derived from a brave and pious imperial ancestry, 

 and especially from his devout and gifted father; it 

 showed his natural gifts and acquired graces, his versa 

 tility, his growing restlessness, his manifold ambitions, his 

 contempt of wise counsel, the dismissal of his most emi 

 nent minister, his carelessness of thoughtful opinion, his 

 meddling in anything and everything, his displays in the 

 theater and in the temples of the gods, his growth until 

 the world recognized him simply as a beast of prey, a mon- 



