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Chapter I

To-Day born of Yesterday — October 24, 1648, to January 30, 1649 — Present War sprang from these Hundred Days — Treaty of Westphalia — Execution of Charles I — Doom of Holy Roman Empire; — Luther and Albert of Brandenburg, or, Prophet and Sword — The Caesar- Pontiff — This the Quarrel between Rome and Berlin — As also between the Nations and Germany — Europe after the Reformation — Macaulay on Losses and Gains of the Catholic Church — Outcome: Latin Christendom narrowed, Age of Despots flourishes — But England begins War of Freedom.

CHAPTER II How England Solved Her Kaiser-problem . 25-44

The "red star, Tyrannicide" from Charles I to Archduke Franz Ferdinand — Tragedy of the King's Evil — Law of Tribe and Law of Justice — Milton praises the "Sentence of a Legal Judicature" — Charles Stuart and William II hallucinated by Dream of Divine Right — Milton's " Defence of the English People" — This Nation discovers (1628-1688) the Balance of Obedience and Authority — Kaiserism, a crowned and sceptred Unfaith — The King rules by Law, not by Will — Regicide no Remedy — The British Constitution become a World-Pattern — Leading the Nations to Victory.

CHAPTER III Prussia's Rise and Claim to "Kultur" . 45-67

Tribute to my German Master and to the Germany I know — Modern Prussia is not that Germany — Outside the Western or Roman Civilisation — Heine's absurd English "man-machine" — Carlyle's account of the Prussian

xv xvi CONTENTS

PAGE origins — "Unsmiling Pomerania" — The Burgrave of Numberg grows into the Electorate of Brandenburg and makes himself a king (1417-1701) — Frederick the Great sums the story — Teuton against Roman — Distinguish Civilisation, Bildung, Kultur — Aristotle defines the first, Goethe the second, what is the third? — Reply, Kultur is mechanism made perfect — Prussia the War-State of Europe as Sparta the War-State of Hellas — Carlyle the apologist of Prussian Kultur; let us look at the Facts.

CHAPTER IV The Royal Caste and Realism in Politics . 68-89

Carlyle's "Frederick" a national Disaster — Macaulay gives the Verdict of Conscience on Prussian perfidy as "reason of State" — The Great Elector's "spiral movements" with "private aim sun-clear to him" — German princely "Pacts," sale of peoples, brutalising of soldiers — The heart of Prussian Kultur is moral cowardice — Slave-States and Royal Caste — "Happy Austria, wed"; Maria Theresa's thirty-nine Titles, not yet Empress — The Failure of Austria — "Savage Prussia, strike hard" — Remarkable Retrospect and Prospect in 1773 — Frederick the Great founds modern Germany in Seven Years War — But so does Napoleon, whom "old Fritz" did not anticipate — Their politician was Machiavel, their philosopher Hobbes — The Absolute State.

CHAPTER V From Napoleon to Bismarck .... 90-111

Attempted suicide of Europe since 1914 — Problem of Feudalism, Democracy, Religion — Course of history as reflected in Frederick, Napoleon, Washington, all contemporaries — The outcome of French Revolutionary Wars— The Congress of Vienna (1814-1815)— Reign of Metternich till 1848— Thirty Years lost to Freedom- Prussia's Feudal Autocracy — The Hohenzollern "Legend" — Growth of Pan-German feeling — Prussia's Enlargement in 1815 — Lethargy of British and French Statesmen — The "Year of Revolutions," 1848 — Days of Frankfort — German Liberals fail utterly — Bismarck's apprenticeship.

CHAPTER VI Reaction Finds its Captain-General . 112-139

The European situation in 1862; policy of Napoleon III and of Queen Victoria — Bismarck's Contest with Prus-

CONTENTS xvii sian Parliament; the "possible Strafford" wins — Last period of History from 1794 to 1914 has five stages: Napoleon I, Metternich, Napoleon III, Bismarck, Emperor William II — Britain's action dictated by its Empire; yet by the "Custom of England" it would never stand a Tyrant of Europe — The Crimean War as an illustration — Napoleon "the Little" a hybrid of Liberal and Autocrat; he did not make Italy and he led to Sedan — Bismarck the "Man of Iron"; forecasts policy at Frankfort; compared with Metternich — Dominates King William; means to supplant Austria; Wins the Elbe Duchies and seaboard for Prussia — Schleswig- Holstein seizure a prelude to the Great War — Queen Victoria follows her dead Husband's policy.

CHAPTER VII Austria, Rome, and France — The Crisis of

the Century 140-167

Bismarck secures Russia by helping to coerce Poland in 1863 — He entangles Napoleon III at Biarritz — In 1861 the Tsar emancipates the Russian serfs, and Lincoln opens the American War of Liberation — Austria, though "ramshackle," survives — The Seven Weeks War (1866) — Hyde Park palings thrown down — Bismarck undertakes to ruin France — Napoleon's troubles in Mexico and Italy — French victory at Mentana makes Vatican Council possible — My first visit to Paris; three views of the Tuileries Gardens — A tribute to Rome and Italy, "Salve, magna parens!" — Rome in various lights — 1870, the climacteric year of the nineteenth century — The Vatican Council — Bismarck understood neither Catholicism nor Democracy — War declared by France — The "Terrible Year" — Third Republic — Scenes from the Fall of Rome and end of the Temporal Power — Britain looks on.

Chapter VIII

Ruskin on the German character — Bismarck's Peace meant an enduring "state of war" — England protects Belgium — What was the Commune of 1871, according to Ruskin? — The "Red Week" of May, and burning of Paris — Socialists, Communists, Nihilists — England's mistake — Bismarck's three games of chess all succeed — Germany wakes to the Pan-German idea — Turkish Misrule ; Disraeli refuses the Berlin Memorandum ; why? — Russo-Turkish War; Treaties of San Stefano and Berlin; "Peace with Honour" meant Balkan troubles and wars xviii CONTENTS down to the Great War, itself included — Sunday, March 13, 1881, sees Alexander II shattered in Petersburg — Great Social Movement all over Europe — Bismarck fails in his Kulturkampf with Rome; finds Leo XIII more than his match; goes to Canossa — His Fall.

CHAPTER IX Enter Kaiser Wilhelm 192-212

The new Emperor's obsessions and "wild dedication" of himself " to unpath'dVaters" — Imperial bagman on behalf of the Reich, but in the grand style — The Pan-German idea becomes explicit and paramount — German Socialism made a lightning-conductor — "I will be Saviour of my People" — Peaceful penetration of Free- Trade Britain — The War proves Pan-Germanism not an idle dream — Immense prosperity of the Fatherland — The Boer War, prelude to present Armageddon — Jameson Raid and Kruger Telegram — Foreign opinion dead against England; who pays? — Queen Victoria passes, and with her the Europe we have known — The Kaiser spies and plans.

CHAPTER X The Matter op Britain 213-235

Peace in South Africa — Prophecy after the Event — Edward VII ends the Isolation of England — Dangers foreseen but not heeded — The King's action construed by Berlin logic as an attack on Germany — France apparently going down — Anti-militarism — The Teutons / charge on others the crimes they themselves commit — Louvain as instance — Bismarck's foreign and colonial policy — From 1903 the Kaiser prepares a "brutal offensive" — Drum-fire of phrases, Navy League, and to wrest the trident from Britain stupendous naval estimates, with Heligoland as new Gibraltar, and Kiel Canal finished — Preliminary invasion of our lands and waters S — British Cabinets, despite warnings, refuse to get ready — Inviting aggression — Tardy North Sea Fleet inadequate; Rosyth, voted in 1905, still not completed in 1914 ; Forth and Clyde Canal not to be at all — This was Britain's assault on Germany when war broke upon us.

Chapter XI

The Kaiser as protector of Moslems, and in effect suzerain of Abdul Hamid in 1898— Teutons and Turks— The Young Turks and "Huriyeh" — Austria, violating Ber-

CONTENTS xix lin Treaty, annexes Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908; while the Kaiser "in shining armour" holds back the Tsar; "potential energy" never wants war, but threatens it — Russia's fatal conflict with Japan inspired from the Wilhelmstrasse — The Balkan League springs up armed in 1912; collapse of New Turkey; 1913, the "Year of Redemption" — Foul Treachery of Bulgarian King; second Balkan War, instigated by Austria; humiliation t/^ of Bulgaria; Treaty of Bucharest — Franz Ferdinand rejoices that the Pan-Slav dream is at an end — Serbia the Slav Piedmont; menace to "ramshackle" Empire — Vienna meditates hostilities in 1913 — A Bulgarian vision — Date of the coming Great War fixed, not later than August 1914 — The Murders at Sarajevo, June 28 of that year.

CHAPTER XII s

"Delenda est Austria," why the Dual Empire must go — y

Its futility and falsehood to its mission — The ultimatum to Serbia was a deliberate crime against the world's peace — The Archduke's murder a pretext, made or pounced upon, and the negotiations from July 23 to August 1, 1914, craftily set on a wrong tack — Sir Edward Grey's innocent diplomacy, and refusal of our pacificist Government to take a view of realities — War invited by the helpless condition of Western Powers — "Infamous proposals" made to us from Berlin — Rejected, but in terms too mild — Kaiser's ultimatums to Paris and Petersburg — He declares War on Russia, August 1— "Black Saturday" in London. Cabinet compelled to decide by Tory pressure on August 2 — Belgium saves the conscience of Europe by refusing to violate its own neutrality — The law, the facts, and the situation — King Albert appeals to France and England — Scenes in the British Parliament linking it with Long Parliament at its height — The "scrap of paper," and "necessity has no law" — Britain at war with Germany from midnight, August 4 — The perfect tragedy.

Chapter XIII

Germany, "Injustice in arms" — Invasion of Belgium — Schrecklichkeit — Ordered by GermanWar-Book; Moltke and Bismarck commend it — Burning, pillage, slaughter, rape, havoc, inflicted on non-combatants — The "Lesson of Louvain"; flight of myriads to Holland. France, Britain — Seven millions starving but for relief from Alxx CONTENTS

PAGE lies and U. S. A. — Logic of destruction followed by modern Huns from 1914 to 1917 in every shape — But the Belgian resistance defeated German plan — Seven weeks — July 23 to September 10 bring decisive results — The March of the Huns to within twenty miles of Paris — Government retires, September 3, to Bordeaux — Battles of the Marne, following on retreat from Mons, end in Allied victory — Germans fall back on the Aisne; war of parallel positions foreseen by Bloch ensues — Time, the "asset," passes over to our side. Great rally of British Commonwealths and India to Britain — Ireland's hope and glory — Why so long thwarted? — Alliances: Turkey and Bulgaria join Central Empires — The Belgian King and Cardinal; heroic stand of both; Cardinal Mercier condemns the Kaiser — Lusitania Day.

Chapter XIV

My book returns to its beginning — America in reserve, as belonging to the years 1648-1649 — Maryland, the first to set up religious freedom — Catholic teachers limit State-powers — First Amendment to American Constitution, 1791, rejects the Caesar-Pontiff established by Treaty of Westphalia — Bearing of all this on our War of Liberation — A pilgrimage to Athens and Marathon — Greek and American Liberty meet on the field where Persian autocracy was defeated — My forecast in January 1915 of the judgment of Washington — The world's agony — Russia throws down the Tsardom — While the Allies observe laws of Neutrality, the Germans utterly abolish them — Expostulations from U. S. A. unavailing — President Wilson requests the belligerents to state their terms; the Germans refuse, the Allies comply — On April 2, 1917, the President holds before Congress the "State-trial of an Empire" — Indictment, verdict, sentence; close of the World's Debate — Lincoln and Wilson, Good Friday, 1865, 1917.

Chapter XV

America joins Britain's League of Honour; the restoration of Free Institutions; Macaulay's witness — From the Tribe to the City — Athens, Rome, Jerusalem, or Light, Law, Revelation — Union of these will bring Peace — Rome as world-centre and Golden Milestone — The Holy Roman People, or Church and Democracy reconciled — A dear price for the New Age paid in the lives of dear friends — My dead soldiers and what they have won for us by dying — Prometheus shall at last be unbound.

Chapter I

TO-DAY is born of yesterday, but as if at once proud and ashamed, too often it disowns its pedigree. Not so the scalds, or prophets, or by whatever name they go, who "look before and after" — to them it is a tale of insight and foresight and the present was already contained in the past, tanquam in causis; whence they know that the future, could they see it, is here and now a potent reality, or, like the view that we catch in a glass of things behind us, it has a twofold being, real and ideal. To question this would be to make of history a chaos, "a mighty maze" and yet "without a plan." The fact is far otherwise. By fate and free will we came into the battle, long since dimly foreseen, which will fix the opening years of the twentieth century as beginning a new time, while ending the old one in the gloom of thunder and eclipse. Reader, I am going to ask you candidly, with me not less candid,

l

I promise you beforehand, to consider the wide historical landscape on which Armageddon unrolls its tragic "Haupt-und-Staatsaction" — or play of Heaven and Earth. And we will have written above the stage these lines from our all-seeing poet —

"Either there is a civil strife in Heaven; Or else the world, too saucy with the gods, Incenses them to send destruction."

I will not keep you with an interminable prologue. Remarkably enough, two happenings there are, of which all men have heard or are now feeling the consequences, brought by the Supreme Power we call Providence into the compass of a Hundred Days, at the end of 1648 and the beginning of 1649. These great events, so near in time to each other, stand yet memorable as well-heads of the Modern Europe into which we were born. One was the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia on October 24, 1648. The other was the execution of Charles Stuart, king of England, on January 30, 1649. This high mountain range forms the watershed of Modern History. The Treaty dissolved Medieval Europe into its parts; the execution did symbolically and in subsequent deed, as old Boswell of Auchinleek growled, to Johnson's indignation, "gar kings ken they had a lith in their neck." The Holy Roman Empire and Absolute Monarchy were doomed from those two days, October 24, 1648, and January 30, 1649.

To bear these dates in mind together should not be impossible. In our elementary schools, where a vague Royalism or Jacobitism hangs about still, the day and year of Charles's "taking off" are taught as indispensable to knowledge; but the Treaty of Westphalia fares differently. It belongs to continental nations — those queer foreigners of whom we need learn nothing except when they invaded us, or we them. Our English History is a water-tight compartment. Beyond it the people never look; and with how little outside it have our statesmen as a rule considered themselves bound to be acquainted? Hence the War, its surprises, its length, and its hazards — unnecessary if England had been ready with a store of facts bearing on our relations to Europe at large. I count myself a perfectly loyal subject. But I see no ground why that should hinder me from being a "good European." Had our governing men been of that disposition, I say not the war could never have come to pass. In my view, hoc erat in fatis, it was bound to come to pass. But the British Empire would have beheld it moving on from afar and made preparation accordingly.

Now, to take the events of 1648 and 1649 in order as things fell out, first, what did this foreign Treaty of Westphalia signify? The English nation, busy in plucking down Charles and setting up Cromwell, was not represented there. By and by she would meet its consequences on many a field of battle. Poland, Muscovy, and Turkey were likewise absent. By weight of metal the chief contracting parties were Austria, which had finally suffered defeat, and France and Sweden, which had beaten her, in the Thirty Years War. Peace now came to seal the victory of West and North. Peace, after Central Europe had been wasted by sword, fire, and famine, all ministers of wrath in this greatest and last of the wars named of Religion! Henceforth in German lands not ruled as hereditary by the House of Habsburg, three Confessions might live side by side: the Lutheran, the Calvinist, and the Catholic — on certain terms. If a prince changed his religion he forfeited his dominions. But instead of one central authority, as hitherto, the "elected Roman Kaiser,"

who was also German king, now every petty lord became a sovereign, and the Fatherland, thus parcelled out, fell beneath the sway of some three hundred despots, all claiming to reign, temporal alike and spiritual, "von Gottes Gnaden," by the grace of God. The Empire still continued in name; but anarchy is the true account of it from henceforth until, smitten to death by Napoleon, it expired with ignominy in 1806. The balance-wheel of the old European system had been shattered by the Reformation ; and at Minister the attempt was made to set up a fresh equilibrium, but the thing was not to be done.

From the year 1648 Germany sank lower and lower. For nearly a hundred years it became in the ruling classes an appanage of France. Its religion, literature, and social aims lost all native vigour. Of course, no German prince or poet was capable of writing as Frenchmen wrote, or of rehearsing in any fit manner at Herrenhausen the graces of Marly and Versailles. But there was compensation in keeping. While Austria, faithful to its name, went on pressing eastward, along the Danube and against the Turk, a new Power, of origin somewhat humble, as derived about 1170 from a certain Conrad of

Hohenzollern in Suabia, not far from the Lake of Constance, began without distinctly meaning it to aspire, as ambition will, to the high place left empty by the incapable House of Habsburg, summed up long afterwards by Bismarck in a scornful phrase, "those idiotic Archdukes." This new Power was Lutheran Prussia.

We can try to remember so much, at all events. Luther has four centuries of German history (1517-1917) to his account. Luther, a strong man, on any reckoning; "a genial ruffian," according to Huxley; a mystic in love with that very beautiful book of the spirit, the "Deutsche Theologie"; a monk armed at all points in the scholastic but curiously modern views of the Englishman, William of Ockham; a master in his native tongue, idiomatic, racy, humorous; the creator, not without help from older Catholic versions, of the German Bible; a Billingsgate polemic, whose words and illustrations are humiliating to man's self-respect; a fanatic, an hypochondriac, a born adversary of Rome — this was the modern Hermann, who broke the power of St. Peter in Deutschland as that ancient Arminius had cut to pieces the legions of Augustus. A strong man, I repeat ; whether a great man will be decided by our standard of greatness. A demonic force, it appears to me; and I rank him with Milton's Satan, with Goethe's Mephistopheles, as a "wondrous son of Chaos," not of Cosmos, in league with darkness rather than the light. He stalks out of the Norse mythology like a Frost- Giant ; or he is Fenri's wolf opening capacious jaws to swallow down the sun. Pardon me, Reader; but I am by choice and temperament a lover of the South and its fine order, clear heaven, and wine-coloured seas; these are my preference —

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Luther broke North from South; he threw Germans back upon their fierce old barbaric traditions of the Teutoburgian Forest, and thus. he will be seen in historical perspective as the real founder of Prussia. He looked round for a sword. Most extraordinary it is, but a fact, that such a sword was already forging to his hand, if he did but know it, by another monk, but this time a soldier, bound under vows of celibacy and of service to Holy Church, the High Master of the Teutonic knights, Albert of Brandenburg, his junior by seven years (Luther, 1483; Albert, 1490). This Hohenzollern converted "Prussia," which he held simply in trust for the Order, into his own hereditary Dukedom, and made the consenting, i. e. newly Protestant knights, his vassals by the still quasi-monastic name of "Junkers" — a name we have often heard since August, 1914. The business involved a feudal submission of this stolen "Ducal" Prussia to Sigismund of Poland, which was done at Cracow, October 8, 1525.

The sword of a future Germany was now laid on the anvil, to be smitten by many strokes and annealed in blazing fires, until it would cut as sharp as any magic Excalibur. The seeming Peace, but veritable anarchy, of Westphalia put it edged and tempered into the hands of the Great Elector. When he laid it down, Brandenburg, under the style and title of Prussia, was ready to proclaim itself a kingdom. That is the next memorable date, January 18, 1701. I will join it straightway with another, which many surviving like myself can call to mind- January 18, 1871, when William I, King of Prussia, was acclaimed German Emperor in the Palace of Versailles by the assembled kings and princes of the two groups, north and south of the Main. In the Hall of

Glories dedicated to Louis XIV, Germany took her revenge upon France for the dismemberment effected in Westphalia upon the old Empire.

Such, then, is the significance to us of that Treaty; it means the rise of Prussia. Note well how the new Empire began, for thereby hangs the whole story. From an Order of Catholic military monks, resembling the Knights of St. John, their landed possessions were forcibly seized by the Grand Master, who was sworn to protect them against all comers. He annexed this great heritage to his own family for ever. And thus he made a secular State from property and dominions which had long been consecrated to the sanctuary. But observe that, in ceasing to be a monk, Albert of Brandenburg became a pope. I am speaking literally. According to the terms of the famous compact among Teuton princes, finally and formally sealed at the Westphalian Treaty, Cujus regio, ejus religiOj, the land-ruler fixes the land's religion.

What can that matter to us now? you may ask. In this way it matters. We have been astonished, nay, perplexed, by the sheep-like docility of an entire people to any and every dictate of its Government. That those millions should have no conscience of their own; that when bidden not only to perpetrate but to justify atrocities in their nature most revolting, Germans of all ranks should without a murmur have thus prostituted their very souls, is a thing to be accounted for; and here is the explanation. The State, as Luther conceived of it, was the one Divine authority left as a public power in the world. To resist it under whatsoever provocation was a sin unto death. His language on the Peasants' Rising in 1525 is well known, and so violent that I would rather not quote it. For I am not composing an invective against Luther. All I wish at this point is to show that, on his principles, the only visible Church is the State, and consequently the only visible Pope is its head. We are familiar with a doctrine and practice like unto this from the proceedings of Henry VIII, who, claiming the power of the keys, exercised his prerogatives over and over again in drawing up variations of belief, and laid upon his subjects the duty under formidable penalties of accepting them.

But in Germany the State has been a neverdying Henry VIII. It has never ceased to command that public opinion should follow its decrees in all things. The ugly name for a still uglier thing is Csesaro-Papism. Every little tyrant, reigning over a few square miles and a handful of Germans bound to "his Transparency," was a Pontifex Maximus, who could turn these pliant subjects from Lutheran to Calvinist and back again, when it suited his policy or his pleasure. Thus Luther and Lutheranism granted to the Prince all that was refused to the Pope.

This conception of the King-Pontiff is fundamental in the Prussian State. It is also heathen, and very old. It is profoundly anti-Christian. Catholics and Puritans have both stood out against it in the name of the New Testament. As for modern Englishmen, to such a distance are they removed from reverence to "His Most Sacred Majesty," illustrated, as Carlyle would say, by a Nell Gwynne and Charles II, that a present claim on the part of Kaiser T *Yilhelm to be Heaven's Vice-gerent stirs them to scornful laughter. Among the grounds on which they feel disposed to think him mad — at all events, like Hamlet, "north-north-west" — by no means the least persuasive appears to them an extravagance so far out of fashion, as well as in itself ridiculous. When in proclamations not merely to his soldiers but to the Poles whom he trampled down, or whom he is invading, this play-actor declares with histrionic gesture that the Lord has sent him, as if he were the Messiah, good sense judges that he might with equal decorum announce himself as "Brother of the Sun and Moon." Rightly so; but here begins the first lesson of the dreadful War Service we are celebrating; and we have not learnt it yet.

To us, for reasons I will give in due course, the Csesar-Pope is an outworn superstition. He lies buried in the coffin of Charles I. But to the Teuton race he is yet alive; he is their Commander of the Faithful, the Caliph of Berlin, and armed with a two-edged sword. He has never laid aside the High Mastership, not now of an Order but a Nation, which consecrates him to his sacred office. Wilhelm is a stage-player, indeed, deserving to be compared with Nero rather than with Caligula; but on that account he seizes readily and renders dramatically the part assigned to him as Hohenzollern, as Deutscher Kaiser; and he proclaims the story of his birth and heaven-descended dignity, in perfect good faith, to a listening but scandalised earth.

Wars led by a Commander of the Faithful are, in effect, wars of religion. If Westphalia saw the end of the last, we are looking on at the progress of another which, in more than one point, resembles and repeats it. The sword that Luther desired, wrought by Albert and his successors into a mighty eater of men, has grown to be the War-Machine behind which Wilhelm, Emperor and Pope, rides into battle. He takes with him a nation of slaves and believers. He calls upon "our old German God" to help him by right of clanship. These follies have the fury of madness in them. But we, in our simplicity, still fancy them put on, whereas they are the innermost, subconscious conviction of a people broken to servility during centuries, incapable of undoing the spell which holds them down.

Now consider the second thing fixed by the Westphalian Treaty of 1648. This was the recognition of boundaries, hereafter pretty nearly inviolable, between the Roman Church and the Churches of the Reformation. No writer has told the story in fewer or more effective words than Macaulay, whose essay on Ranke's History of the Popes comes nearer to philosophic thought than all the other pages he covered with phrases and pictures. There are those who affect some disdain of the eloquent Whig, descended from Norse and

Celt, as though his utterances were the flourish of kettledrums in an orchestra. But Macaulay, the man of letters, had seasons when he prophesied; and this hour devoted to Von Ranke caught him up to Pisgah heights, whence he surveyed the past lying at his feet and the future very far off. He had no metaphysics; the question which he opened concerning Religion, whether, viz. it holds or exhibits any law of progress, Macaulay was incapable of answering. His temper, cast in a secular mould, never could bear visionaries. Yet in this one essay there is a touch of the visionary. Why did Rome lose what she lost at the Reformation? Why, fifty years from Luther's uprising, could Catholicism "scarcely maintain itself on the shores of the Mediterranean"? Why, again, one hundred years after it, could "Protestantism scarcely maintain itself on the shores of the Baltic"? And why the settlement which was finally reached in 1648? "When, at length," says Macaulay, "the Peace of Westphalia was concluded, it appeared that the Church of Rome remained in full possession of a vast dominion which in the middle of the preceding century she seemed on the point of losing. No part of Europe remained Protestant, except that part which had become thoroughly Protestant before the generation which heard Luther preach had passed away." I am not proposing, at my present stage, to submit reasons for these things which travel farther than those alleged by Macaulay. Later on, that task shall be attempted. Our concern just now is with Rome's actual circumference as it was traced at the Westphalian congress.

It is a remarkable one. If we take the map of Europe, we shall see that it lay very largely within the lines traced by the Emperor Valentinian in the year a.d. 364, as dividing the West from the East. On one side we reckon Thrace, Asia, and Egypt; on the other, which is ours, Illyricum, Italy, the Gauls, Britain, Spain, and Africa. The province of Illyricum included classic Greece or Hellas, on portions of which the Venetian Republic held a faltering grasp until 1715. Africa had long fallen a prey to Islam and nondescript Barbarians. The Britons, though more under influences emanating from Geneva than from Wittenberg, were fiercely antipapal; yet the Church of England showed a significant spirit of compromise, and gloried in its Via Media. But Italy, the Gauls, and Spain kept faithful to Rome. The Low Countries were almost equally partitioned, as to numbers, between Catholics and the Reformed. Switzerland was in much the same condition. And the Rhine, the Main, the Danube had become, though not altogether or exactly, bounds which the Roman missionaries found it hard to cross. Bohemia was Catholic; Hungary had its Dissidents. Ear away from the purview of Rome, to whose empire it was never subdued but whose faith it embraced with enthusiasm, Ireland, soon to be given over to "the curse of Cromwell," was earning by its afflictions the title of the Martyr-Nation. As remote in the Middle East as Ireland in the North- West, another people resembling the Irish by their military spirit, their eloquence, brilliancy, and enormous difficulties in setting up a State on firm foundations — I mean the Poles — were Catholics too, and with them we must count the Lithuanians.