One of the effects of such a frame of mind is to strike the victim of it
with blindness. This symptom has been manifest in the stupendous
blunders of German diplomacy. The successors of Bismarck have alienated
their natural allies, such as Italy and Rumania, and have driven England
into this war against the evident intentions of English Radicals. But
the Germans have misconceived even more important things--they set out
on their adventure in the belief that England would be embarrassed by
civil war and unable to take any effective part in the fray; and they
had to learn something which all their writers had not taught them--that
there is a nation's spirit watching over England's safety and greatness,
a spirit at whose mighty call all party differences and racial strifes
fade into insignificance. In the same way they had reckoned on the
unpreparedness of Russia, in consequence of internal dissensions and
administrative weakness, without taking heed of the love of all Russians
for Russia, of their devotion to the long-suffering giant whose life is
throbbing in their veins. The Germans expected to encounter raw and
sluggish troops under intriguing time-servers and military Hamlets whose
"native hue of resolution" had been "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of
thought." Instead of that they were confronted with soldiers of the same
type as those whom Frederick the Great and Napoleon admired, led at last
by chiefs worthy of their men.
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