In striking contrast to this military aptitude they have to-day become a peace-loving--an almost "too" peace-loving--nation.

A rude shock is needed to awaken their warlike instincts, and compel them to show their military strength.
This strongly-marked love of peace is due to various causes.
It springs first from the good-natured character of the German people, which finds intense satisfaction in doctrinaire disputations and partisanship, but dislikes pushing things to an extreme.

It is connected with another characteristic of the German nature.

Our aim is to be just, and we strangely imagine that all other nations with whom we exchange relations share this aim.

We are always ready to consider the peaceful assurances of foreign diplomacy and of the foreign Press to be no less genuine and true than our own ideas of peace, and we obstinately resist the view that the political world is only ruled by interests and never from ideal aims of philanthropy.