Austria; and so the whole of Schleswig-Holstein eventually became part of the German Empire. In view of the fact that Britain and France were not in a position to honour their guarantee of the integrity of Denmark in this case, it is all the more satisfactory that Britain took so bold and straightforward a step as she did in respect to her guarantee of the neutrality of Belgium. It is still fresh in the memory of us all how ruthlessly Bismarck seized Alsace and Lorraine at the close and as part of the spoils of the Franco-Prussian War. There never had been, in any of these cases, any pretence or suggestion that the peoples themselves should be consulted. Such a procedure would have been too inconsistent with the political principles of Prussia and dynastic absolutism. A sovereign such as the Kaiser regards the territories over which he presides as his own personal property, and looks upon territories of other States as properties which he may possibly acquire at some future date. In short, the Kaiser's principle is the very simple one of regarding sovereignty as a commerce, the goods dealt in being territories and peoples.
And when these territories were seized, Prussia's king always did his best to impose upon the conquered peoples the so-called superior culture of the Fatherland. In doing this he acted upon a well-settled principle, though one that is indefensible, whether it be regarded from the highly moral point of view or from that of common sense and practical politics. Prussia, or the Government of the German Empire, cannot even at the present day conceive that her existence is justified unless she is engaged in the task of imposing herself with all her so-called culture and ideals upon some weaker nation and people. Germany sees a people, it may be the Poles, and she sees that those people speak the Polish language. At once the Prussian instinct comes to the front and Germany is not happy for one moment until she; is doing all that she can to make the Poles speak German. Why this should be so it is difficult to understand, when regarded in a reasonable frame of mind. The Kaiser sees Polish institutions, which, to say the worst of them, are as good as those of the German Empire, and must forthwith do his best to overturn them and substitute something which he thinks better for the Poles. And so by imposing upon the Poles the German language and institutions acceptable to the German mind, Germany believes that she is imposing, and is justified in imposing, upon Poland a superior culture; she seems never to have known or appreciated the fact that Poland has had in her day, and is yet capable of having again, a civilisation equal in all respects to that of Prussia. " Solomon has said," repeated to an applauding German audience a famous
