But he could not withdraw object lesson number one, of which Stevenson said "the German breach of faith was public and express; it must have been deliberately premeditated: and it was resented in the States as a deliberate insult." And caused him to make further remarks which, if taken to heart in Berlin, would have saved a world of trouble. One was with regard to the German consul: "If the object of diplomacy be the organization of failure in the midst of hate, he was a great diplomatist."
The other was equally penetrating:
"The German flag might wave over her puppet unquestioned, but there is a law of human nature which diplomatists should be taught at school, and it seems they are not: that men can tolerate base injustice, but not the combination of injustice and subterfuge. Hence the chequered career of the thimble-rigger."
The second warning the United States received of German ambitions was more direct and more dangerous. It recalled the archaic but more frank declaration of the regal combi-
