German commercial class; and (2) the political ignorance of the German
people.

It is obvious, I think, that a military aristocracy alone, or even with
the combined support of empire-building philosophers and a jack-boot
Kaiser, could not have hurried the solid German nation into so strange a
situation. In old days, and under an avowedly feudal order of society,
such a thing might well have happened. But to-day the source and seat of
power has passed from crowned heads and barons into another social
stratum. It is the financial and commercial classes in the modern States
who have the sway; and unless these classes desire it the military
cliques may plot for war in vain. Since 1870, and the unification of
Germany, the growth of her manufactures and her trade has been enormous;
her commercial prosperity has gone up by leaps and bounds; and this
extension of trade, especially of international trade, has led--as it
had already so conspicuously done in England--to the development of
corresponding ideals and habits of life among the population. The
modest, simple-living, middle-class households of fifty years ago have
largely disappeared, and in their place have sprung up, at any rate in
the larger towns, the very same commercial and parasitical classes, with
their Philistine luxury and fatuous ideals, which have been so
depressing and distressing a feature of _our_ social life during the
same period. Naturally, the desire of these classes has been for the
glorification of Germany, the establishment of an absolutely world-wide
commercial supremacy, and the ousting of England from her markets.

"Germany," said Peter Kropotkin[4] a year or two ago, "on entering a
striking period of juvenile activity, quickly succeeded in doubling and
trebling her industrial productivity, and soon increasing it tenfold;
and now the German middle classes covet new sources of enrichment in