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disinterested character had given him, in both camps, an unique ascendancy. And, had the great Hanoverian played his part in the Titanic struggles of the year, had he entered Paris with the Allies, and triumphed with Blücher at Waterloo, that ascendancy might have stemmed reaction and bridled too impetuous reform; it might have bridged the gulf between Junkerdom and the rising middle class, and spared Prussia some developments which are tragically prominent to-day.

The career and the views thus epitomised have for us a special appeal. Devoted to the service of Prussia, Scharnhorst never, patriotism apart, represented her spirit. To the capacity for intellectual abstraction, the appreciation of intellectual effort, the foresight, the thoroughness so characteristically German, he joined the practical efficiency, the power of extemporisation, the readiness to assume responsibility, and the capacity for compromise which we regard as specially British. On the recruiting problem he spoke with peculiar authority, since he had worked under the auspices of several recruiting systems. We find him concluding (1) that special value attaches to the degree of enthusiasm which leads a man to volunteer; (2) that a steady sufficient supply for Home Defence (with nothing else was he concerned) cannot be had in peace time without resort to the principle of compulsion; (3) that compulsion, combined with careful preparatory organisation, enables a country to mobilise all her powers in times of extremity; (4) that, though patriotism is independent of military institutions, universal military obligation forces upon every man's notice the claims of national obligation. Further than this his dicta cannot be pressed. He himself favoured, as political exigencies demanded, various solutions, and indeed sundry makeshifts. He himself distinguished the needs of insular and continental powers; nor was any more prompt to reckon with local sentiment or prejudice, local habits and local conditions.

H. C. FOXCROFT.

Art. 7.-THE ORIGINS OF THE PRESENT WAR.

1. Germany and the Next War. By General Friedrich von Bernhardi. Translated by Alan H. Powles. Popular edition. London: Arnold, 1914.

2. Pan-Germanism. By Roland G. Usher, Ph.D. London: Constable, 1913.

3. Germany and England. By J. A. Cramb, M.A. London: Murray, 1914.

4. The Hapsburg Monarchy. By Henry Wickham Steed. London: Constable, 1914.

5. Parliamentary Papers: Correspondence respecting the European Crisis. Miscellaneous, No. 6. London: Wyman, 1914.

6. Despatches from H.M. Ambassadors at Berlin and at Vienna respecting the Rupture of Relations with Germany and with Austria-Hungary. Miscellaneous, Nos. 8 and 10. London: Wyman, 1914.

No tropical storm has ever burst with more elemental fury than the great war of 1914. But whereas the simple Chinaman in his junk knows how to 'smell' the coming typhoon, and the master mariner how to watch its approach by the readings of the barometer, and, with the growth of science, meteorological stations have learnt how to track its course and measure its strength and velocity in time to send out their warnings far and wide, how few have foreseen the coming of the great war, and how rarely have they been listened to! Yet to any one who studied with moderate care the history of his own times, who watched the evolution of German policy under the Emperor William, who could interpret the signs and portents of German Realpolitik, who read the meaning of that strange apotheosis of brute force which has gradually possessed not only the whole military caste, but the vast majority of the intellectuals as well as the commercial and industrial classes in Germany, the coming of the great war has been for many years past no less certain and inevitable than the ultimate explosion of given forces subjected to given pressure.

The diplomatic correspondence laid before Parliament describes the actual explosion. What I propose to describe in the following pages is the generation during the last

twenty years in Germany of the forces which at the appointed hour the Emperor William determined to release. It is the whole evolution of German policy since his accession which has led, and was fatally bound to lead, to the present catastrophe, by concentrating the whole material and intellectual energies of the German nation on the pursuit of world dominion based upon force alone.

The doctrine of the supremacy of might over right is indeed no novel doctrine in the history of Prussia. Not even in the present day has it been more frankly propounded under William II than it was by his great ancestor, Frederick II; it underlay equally the policy of Bismarck, who declared that not through empty speeches and idle demonstrations was the task of Prussia to be achieved, but by blood and iron; and it was by blood and iron, by the three successful wars of 1864, 1866 and 1870, that Prussia achieved the hegemony of united Germany, and the new German Empire became the dominant power of the European Continent.

But Bismarck was at the same time a great statesman, and he knew that even blood and iron had their limitations. For twenty years after Sedan, he remained the all-powerful Chancellor of Imperial Germany; and throughout that period the main object of his policy was to consolidate the position which he had achieved for her. It was a policy of conservative concentration, and the means by which he chiefly ensued it were to bind to Germany by formal alliances such States as were most amenable to his influence, and to prevent by skilful diplomacy the creation of any system of alliances between other States which might counteract the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary, subsequently, by the inclusion of Italy, expanded into the Triple Alliance, which was the coping-stone of his edifice. Taken himself entirely by surprise by the extraordinary recuperative powers which France displayed after 1870, he accepted the fact that, so long as Alsace-Lorraine remained an open wound, France could never be reconciled to the Treaty of Frankfort. But, so long also as France could be isolated, he knew her to be powerless for offence. The only two Powers to whom she could conceivably look for support were England and Russia; and, whilst on

the one hand he reckoned on the common dynastic interests of the German and Russian sovereigns and on the profound antagonism between the Republican institutions of France and the Russian autocracy, to keep France and Russia apart, on the other he relied on the long-standing differences between England and France, especially after the British occupation of Egypt, to perpetuate their estrangement. Against the still more remote contingency of any close co-operation between Russia and England, their Asiatic rivalry afforded him an adequate guarantee.

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This much on the negative side. On the positive side, he had two leading maxims which he constantly bore in mind. The one was never to cut the wire between Berlin and St Petersburg, and the other was never to quarrel seriously with England 'about a little bit of Africa.' With regard to the first, one has only to remember his Macchiavellian Re-insurance Treaty' with Russia, by which he sought to disarm Russian suspicions in regard to German relations with Austria, even at the expense of Germany's good faith towards her ally. For England he had no liking, and he was apt to lose his temper with the procrastinating methods of British diplomacy. But he was careful never to go too far, and, at the cost of some popularity, he set his face persistently against extravagant schemes of naval or colonial expansion, which might seriously jeopardise Anglo-German relations. Two remarkably frank statements which he made in the Reichstag on Jan. 10, 1885, and on Jan. 26, 1889, are on record:

"We have been told that we must either abandon our colonial policy or increase our naval strength to such an extent that we need not fear any naval Power, or, to speak more clearly, that our navy should rival that of England herself. However, even if we should succeed in building up a navy as strong as that of England, we should still have to fear an alliance of England and France. . . . That is not a policy we can pursue. I can approve no attempt either to disturb the peace between England and Germany or to diminish the confidence that peace between these two Powers will be maintained, by hinting that some day we may find ourselves in an armed conflict with England. I absolutely deny the possibility.'

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The preservation of Anglo-German goodwill is, after all, the most important thing. I see in England an old and traditional ally. . . . No differences exist between England and Germany. And if I should discover that we might lose touch with England, I should act cautiously and endeavour to avoid losing England's goodwill.'

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A policy of so much caution and moderation was not calculated to satisfy the ardent temperament and vaulting ambitions of the young Emperor, William II. This is not the time or the occasion to attempt an exhaustive analysis of William II's complex character, full as it is of the most extraordinary contradictions-on the one hand mystic and medieval, on the other intensely modern and materialistic; with the most exalted conception of his divinely-appointed mission, and with the lowest conception of the methods by which it is lawful for him to discharge it; intensely appreciative of all the arts of peace, but chiefly as ancillary to the supreme art of war; a grand charmeur, as M. Jules Simon once called him, on the surface and when he wishes to charm, but with an underlying vein of revolting coarseness and brutality; intolerant of the slightest opposition; ready to dismiss with abrupt contumely those who have served him the most loyally, as soon as their counsels cease to be palatable; surrounding himself by choice with obsequious flatterers, because he cannot suffer the truth; and, as was once bitterly said by one who both knew him and loved him well, incapable of telling the truth, even to himself. Above all, he has been always and at all times a splendid actor, and, alas! also his own stage manager, with the whole world as his stage.

Could the control of the mightiest military empire of modern Europe have fallen into more dangerous hands? Nemo repente fuit turpissimus, and the young Emperor who succeeded to the throne of Germany in 1888 only developed by gradual stages into the mad War Lord who now challenges the whole world to Armageddon. He has been the child of his own generation, and the evolution of German policy under his auspices has been due quite as much to the atmosphere of the new Germany which has grown up since 1870 as to the impulse of her Emperor. World-power or downfall,' is to-day not only William II's motto, nor is it only the motto of the great

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