"Justice," Goethe says aptly, "is a quality and a phantom of the Germans." We are always inclined to assume that disputes between States can find a peaceful solution on the basis of justice without clearly realizing what _international_ justice is.
An additional cause of the love of peace, besides those which are rooted in the very soul of the German people, is the wish not to be disturbed in commercial life.
The Germans are born business men, more than any others in the world.
Even before the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, Germany was perhaps the greatest trading Power in the world, and in the last forty years Germany's trade has made marvellous progress under the renewed expansion of her political power.

Notwithstanding our small stretch of coast-line, we have created in a few years the second largest merchant fleet in the world, and our young industries challenge competition with all the great industrial States of the earth.

German trading-houses are established all over the world; German merchants traverse every quarter of the globe; a part, indeed, of English wholesale trade is in the hands of Germans, who are, of course, mostly lost to their own country.

Under these conditions our national wealth has increased with rapid strides.
Our trade and our industries--owners no less than employes--do not want this development to be interrupted.

They believe that peace is the essential condition of commerce.