Among other coincidences, the Danish princess who had married the English heir was something very like a fairy princess to the English crowd.

The national poet had hailed her as a daughter of the sea-kings; and she was, and indeed still is, the most popular royal figure in England.

But whatever our people may have been like, our politicians were on the very tamest level of timidity and the fear of force to which they have ever sunk.

The Tin Soldier of the Danish army and the paper boat of the Danish navy, as in the story, were swept away down the great gutter, down that colossal _cloaca_ that leads to the vast cesspool of Berlin.
Why, as a fact, did not England interpose?
There were a great many reasons given, but I think they were all various inferences from one reason; indirect results and sometimes quite illogical results, of what we have called the Germanisation of England.

First, the very insularity on which we insisted was barbaric, in its refusal of a seat in the central senate of the nations.