Note (return) — Chapter IV

Bismarck, with his narrower and more practical intellect, never looked forward, as Mazzini did, to a 'pact of humanity,' which should include even the nations of Europe, and, indeed, always protested against the attempt to conceive of any relation whatsoever, moral or political, as existing between any State and the States or populations outside its boundaries. 'The only sound principle of action,' he said, 'for a great State is political egoism.'[111] When, therefore, after Bismarck's death German sailors and soldiers found themselves in contact with the defenceless inhabitants of China or East Africa, they were, as the Social-Democrats quickly pointed out, provided with no conception of the situation more highly developed than that which was acted upon in the fifth century A.D., by Attila and his Huns.