William II, the God of war and of force, is in every way responsible for events in the East.  Only his friendship, and the many consequences of that friendship, have given to Abdul Hamid the courage of his massacres, of his resistance to all efforts at reconciliation, and of his military proceedings in Greece.  The German Emperor had been able to persuade the simple-minded Government of France of his peaceful and humanitarian intentions.  It only needed a few of us to revolt and to express our indignation, to unmask him, and to show in its true, lurid light, the real nature of his actions, so as to enable the nations to know him for what he is.  To-day he is the master of Europe; but let the power of the Kaiser be what it may (and it is a power no more capable of honesty than that of Bismarck, who lied without ceasing, forfeited without ceasing his honour, and accepted responsibility for crime), whatever conquests hereafter William II may achieve, even should we be defeated again, we shall be able to stand up before him and to his face to say, “You will never achieve greatness!” Material greatness turns again to dust, like all matter, but moral greatness is eternal, an intangible thing, which surrounds men, invisible, and which emanates from the best amongst them.

We will leave to history, which shall surely record it, the judgment of human men, of real peace-lovers, concerning William II, concerning this protector of the Red Sultan, this renegade and denier of his faith, who has sold his soul in order to govern the world through evil, through trickery, through force and through war.  You have only to read the German legends, to analyse the souls of the traditional heroes of Germany, to see that they are indeed much more closely allied to the Turks (who have only understood Islamism under its aspects of conquest) than they are to the traditions which Europe has inherited from Greece and from her daughters, Rome and Byzantium.

The struggle of to-day lies between these two spirits:  one the barbarian spirit, the spirit of conquest, which knows no other law but force, the spirit which subdues and kills, represented by Turkey and by Germany; the other, the spirit of civilisation, of love, which knows no other law than the right, the spirit which emancipates and vivifies, the spirit of Greece, from which European civilisation is drawn, excepting always that of the Germans and Turks.  Either the East will resist the Turks, and Europe will resist Germany, or else both will relapse into barbarism, and be condemned to war without ceasing, to butcheries, to the brutality of force and all its works.

May 27, 1897. [7]

At all events they have not yet won their bet in Berlin that they would make us look ridiculous and hateful.  Those very wise and well-bred people, who have been advising us to revise our national education, so as to welcome the Kaiser in 1900, have had but meagre success.  As to the golden stream, which brought us the 8000 marks of the King of Prussia,[8] thank Heaven, it has not been able to drown our patriotism.  Brother Frenchmen, it is still lawful for lunatics and ill-bred people like ourselves to remember Sedan, Metz, Strasburg and Paris, as well as Kronstadt and Toulon.  Then let us not forget either the first rays of sunlight which reach us from Russia, or the darkness of 1870. [9]