98 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



a trace, for Treitschke I did not know. All with whom 

 I ever came in contact expressed a feeling that 

 England was the old home of freedom, that she had 

 led the van in securing that freedom by gradual and 

 peaceable measures, and, in short, that the path in 

 which the Englishman trod was that in which they 

 wished to follow. "We cannot,'' my friends said to 

 me, " express our opinion on political matters with 

 the freedom to which you in England are accustomed. 

 How indeed can this be otherwise, when we are 

 governed by an autocratic power which believes in 

 the divine right of kings, and have to submit to a 

 condition of things in which summary punishment for 

 ' Majestatsbeleidigung ' is possible ? " 



It is, however, necessary to remember that a change 

 which may indeed be said to be revolutionary has 

 occurred in Germany. When I first went there, now 

 more than fifty years ago, the population of what sub- 

 sequently constituted the Empire was under forty 

 millions ; at the present time it numbers over sixty. 

 In the second place, half a century ago, oversea com- 

 merce and manufacturing industry (Welthandel), such 

 as we in England have enjoyed for generations, was 

 practically non-existent. There was no means of live- 

 lihood for the increasing population but agriculture or 

 manual industry (Handarbeit) ; consequently millions of 

 stalwart men and women of Teutonic blood found their 

 way to the New World, where free scope for employ- 

 ment and improvement lay open to them. Their 

 children, however, soon ceased to be Germans ; they 

 no longer looked back on the Fatherland as their 

 home, but threw themselves with ardour into the lap 

 of the Republic, and thus ceased to give power and 

 strength to their old nationality. How different is 

 the present condition of things! The unification of 



