Review of Reviews, 111-3/06. 



Leading Articles. 



583 



MORE ABOUT THE GERMAN DIABOLUS 



And his " Potsdam Party " in London. 

 " There is no Devil but Germany, and Mr. Hal- 

 dane is the prophet of Germany "; in that sentence 

 we have the condensed essence of the first twenty 

 pages of the new number of the National Review. 

 It is impossiiiie not to admire, ahnost to love, 

 Colone. Maxse for the splendid pertinacity with 

 which he fights a losing cause, despite our conviction 

 of the mischievous madness of the principles to 

 which he is devoted. The heart always warms to a 

 man who lights hard, hits straight from the shoulder, 

 calls a spade a spade, and says what he thinks, even 

 when we know he is fighting on the wrong side, and 



IVafirc 'Ja<:ch] 



[Stuttgart. 



Well, to bo Sura! The Colonial Gentlemen have been busy 



here. too. 



[Some membeis of the German House of Representatives have 



been touring in the Colonies to study them.] 



that his victory would entail untold misery upon 

 mankind. We feel, in short, for Colonel Maxse 

 something of the sentiment which is inspiretl in 

 readers of " Paradise Lost " towards Satan. 



THE KAISEB WITH TWO POPES IN HIS POCKET. 

 Colonel Maxse is obsessed by an evil spirit which 

 leads him to see the hand of Germany in everything 

 that goes wrong all over the world. Here is an in 

 stance. After deploring the conflict between tin' 

 Church and the Repulilic in France. Colonel Maxse 

 says : — 



Pius X. owes liis election to the Austrian veto upon Car- 

 dinal BampoUa. the Fiencli candidate, which is believed by 

 Frenchmen, rightly or wrongly, to have been prompted by a 

 hint from Rerltn. Be this as it /nay. the German Kmperor 

 has struck up almost as intimate an alliance with the pre- 

 .sent Pope as witli tl:e Sultan of Turke.w and it is scarcely 

 surprising" tliat Frenchmen sliould detect the Imperial hand 

 in the disastrous decision of the Vatican forbidding tlie 

 Catholic Church in Fiance from cominjr to terms with the 

 Republic. Sucli a policy promotes chaos if it does not actu- 

 all.\' provoke civil war, and must still further weaken France 

 in the ■:idvantat:e of her German enemy. The international 

 aspect of the Church crisis was subsequently accentuated by 

 tile election of a German. Father Wernz. as General of tlie 

 Jesuits, commonly (railed tlie Black Pope. With two Popes iu 



his pocket Kajser Wilhelm is a happy man, and is manifest- 

 ing his joy by showering " Black Eagles " on ecclesiastical 

 dignitaries. 



• THE GRANB INTEENATIONAL AGENT PROVOCATEUK." 



Colonel Maxse appears to have taken Cicero's 

 orations against Catiline as the model for his invec- 

 tive against Germany and its Kaiser : — 



We have not the space to recapitulate the various occa- 

 sions, nor is it necessary to do so, as they are matters of 

 common knowledge, when Russia and Great Britain, Great 

 Britain and France, or France and Italy, found themselves 

 on the verge of war since 1870: but in every single instance 

 there is reason to suspect Germany of having played the 

 grand international agent provocateur. That Wilhelm II. is a 

 willing and not an inapt pupil of the Iron Chancellor as a 

 war maker is shown by his success in promoting the Spanish- 

 American War, the South African War. and the Far Eastern 

 W'ar, as also by his sinister efforts during the Siam. Fashoda 

 and Port Arthur incidents. Let us never forget, for we have 

 it on the authority of no less a person than Count Bulow, 

 that the German Government followed up the Kriiger tele- 

 gram in 1896 by endeavouring to organise a coalition against 

 Great Britain, and certainly no stone was left unturned 

 during the South African War to enlarge the area of hostili- 

 ties. Russian diplomatists could tell a tell on this score 

 should their lips ever become unsealed. Wilhelm II. *s latest 

 achievement as marplot was his frantic effort to prevent a 

 peaceful settlement of the North Sea outrage in October, 

 1904. Happily his influence over Nicholas II. bears no pro- 

 portion to his activity. 



"OUR DEADLIEST ENEMY." 



The South African war, during which the Kaiser 

 twice received the thanks of Queen Victoria for 

 having averted international intervention on behalf 

 of the Boers, was, according to Colonel Maxse, 



The crisis which taught us that Germany was our deadliest 

 enemy, wdio was only restrained by a sense of her own naval 

 impotence from compassing our destruction. If England 

 can only be inveigled into any kind of " understanding " 

 with Germany, however intrinsically worthless, the Wil- 

 helmstrasse would acquire a powerful lever for undermining 

 our entente with France, as the French would very naturally 

 feel that we could never he counted upon in preserving the 

 balance of Furopean Power upon which the future of France 

 depends, and which has been dangerously dislocated by the 

 effacement of Eussia. In that case we should inevitably see 

 the evolution of that great anti-British coalition under Ger- 

 man leadership, which has for many years been the sleeping 

 and waking thought of WiUie'.m IT. Such an obvious denoue- 

 ment must be obvious to every British statesman whose head 

 has not been turned by Imperial flattery. Gernuiny onli/ seeks 

 inir friendship in order to detach France from us. 



"THE POTSDAM PARTY" IN THE CABINET. 



The worst of it is that this Beelzebub of nations 

 has his allies in the British Cabinet. Colonel Maxse 

 says : — 



The Potsdam Party in the Cabinet is understood to consist 

 of .Mr. Haldane, Lord Loreburn, and Mr. Bryce. Our War 

 Minister is believed to be animated by his innate love of Goi- 

 many, tlie Lord Chancellor and the Irish Secretary by to 

 irresistible attraction which any enemy of their own country 

 exercises over a certain tvpe of British Radical. 



Of these, Mr. Haldane is the worst, although in 

 Mr. Winston Churchill he has an understudy: — 



There are renewed rumours in Germany of yet another 

 fresh naval programme, which we have reason to believe the 

 Kaiser is bent on laying before the Reichstag. This is the 

 result of our dropping " Dreadnoughts." 



It is verv magnificent all this, hut, oh, how mad ! 



