diplomacy. Every one remembers how in 1866, just before the Franco-Prussian war, Mr. Matthew Arnold's imaginary Prussian, Arminius von Thunder-ten-Tronckh, wrote to the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, begging him to prevail upon his fellow-countrymen "for Heaven's sake not to go on biting, first the French Emperor's tail, and then ours."
On 18 February, 1905, the Belgian Minister in Berlin reported thus:
The real cause of the English hatred of Germany is the jealousy aroused by the astonishing development of Germany's merchant navy and of her commerce and manufactures. This hatred will last until the English have thoroughly learned to understand that the world's trade is not by rights an exclusively English monopoly. Moreover, it is studiously fostered by the Times and a whole string of other daily papers and periodicals that do not stop short of calumny in order to pander to the tastes of their readers.
At that time the centre of the English navy had just been shifted to the North Sea, to the accompaniment of a very disturbing and, as at first reported, a very flamboyant speech from the Civil Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Lee. Of the sensation thereby created in Germany, the Belgian Minister says:
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