In these forecasts

Moreover, although the Curragh incident, as it was called, had been patched over in a sort of way, the danger of civil war in Ireland had not diminished in the least by Midsummer. Indeed it had sensibly increased. During the interval large quantities of arms and ammunition had been imported by Ulstermen in defiance of the Government, and Nationalists were eagerly engaged in emulating their example. The emergency conference of the leaders of parties which the King, acting upon the desperate advice of his Ministers, had called together at Buckingham Palace ended in complete failure.















On Monday the 27th of July readers of the morning newspapers, looking anxiously for news of the Servian reply to the Austrian ultimatum, found their eyes distracted by even blacker headlines, which announced that a Scots regiment had fired on a Dublin mob .















How the bureaucrats of Berlin must have rubbed their hands and admired their own prescience! Civil war in Ireland had actually begun, and in the very nick of time! And this occurrence, no less dramatic than opportune, was a triumph not merely for German foresight but for German contrivance—like a good many other things, indeed, which have taken place of late. When the voyage of the good ship Fanny, which in April carried arms to the coast of Antrim, comes to be written, and that of the anonymous yacht which sailed from German waters, transhipped its {64} cargo in the channel, whence it was safely conveyed by another craft to Dublin Bay to kindle this blaze in July—when these narratives are set out by some future historian, as they deserve to be, but not until then, it will be known how zealously, benevolently, and impartially our loyal and kindly Teuton cousins forwarded and fomented the quarrel between Covenanter and Nationalist. What the German bureaucrats, however, with all their foresight, apparently did not in the least foresee, was that the wound which they had intentionally done so much to keep open, they would speedily be helping unintentionally to heal.















With regard to South Africa, German miscalculation and intrigue pursued a somewhat similar course, though with little better results. It was assumed that South Africa, having been fully incorporated in the Empire as a self-governing unit only twelve years earlier, and as the result of a prolonged and sanguinary war, must necessarily be bent on severing the British connection at the earliest opportunity. The Dutch, like the frogs in the fable, were imagined to be only awaiting a favourable moment to exchange the tyranny of King Log for the benevolent rule of King Stork















however, various considerations were overlooked. In the first place, the methods of incorporation pursued by the British in South Africa were as nearly as possible the opposite of those adopted by Prussia in Poland, in Schleswig-Holstein, and in Alsace-Lorraine. In many quarters there were doubtless bitter memories among the Dutch, and in some others disappointed ambition still ached; {65} but these forces were not enough to plunge into serious civil war two races which, after nearly a century of strife and division, had but a few years before entered into a solemn and voluntary covenant to make a firm union, and dwell henceforth in peace one with another. What object could there be for Dutchmen to rise in rebellion against a government, which consisted almost exclusively of Dutch statesmen, and which had been put in office and was kept there by the popular vote?