In Persia we saw it betray the principles of democratic government,
destroy an infant constitution and disembowel the constitutionalists,
whilst it divided their country into "spheres of influence" and to-day
we see it harvesting with hands yet red with the blood of Persian
patriots the redder fruit of the seed then sown.

The alliance with France, while more natural than that with Russia if
we regard Great Britain as a democracy (by eliminating India, Egypt,
Ireland) had the same guilty end in view, and rests less on affinity
of aims than on affinity of antipathies.

The _Entente Cordiale_, the more closely we inspect it, we find is
based not on a cordial regard of the parties to it for each other, but
on a cordial disregard all three participants share for the party it
is aimed against.

It will be said that Germany must have done something to justify the
resentment that could bring about so strangely assorted a combination
against herself. What has been the crime of Germany against the powers
now assailing her? She has doubtless committed many crimes, as have
all the great powers, but in what respect has she so grievously sinned
against Europe that the Czar, the Emperor of India, the King of
Great Britain and Ireland, the Mikado and the President of the French
Republic--to say nothing of those minor potentates who like Voltaire's
minor prophets seem _capable de tout_--should now be pledged, by
irrevocable pact, to her destruction as a great power?

"German militarism," the reply that springs to the lips, is no more a
threat to civilisation than French or Russian militarism. It was born,