has allowed the military and social theories of General von Bernhardi and the senselessly criminal pronouncements of the Emperor William II to prevail for so many years, it has put the most formidable weapons possible into the hands of its enemies.  The people who governed Germany for so long have no right to complain now of the conditions in which their country is placed.  But the great German people, hardworking and persevering, has full right to look on such conditions as the negation of justice.  The head of a European State, a man of the clearest view and calmest judgment, speaking to me of the Emperor William, of whose character and intellect he thought very little, expressed the view that the Emperor did not want war, but that he would not avoid it when he had the chance.

The truth is that Germany troubled itself very little about France.  Kinderlen Waechter, the most intelligent of the German Foreign Ministers, and perhaps the one most opposed to the War, when he outlined to me the situation as it was ten years ago, showed no anxiety at all except in regard to Russia.  Russia might make war, and it was necessary to be ready or to see that it came about at a moment when victory was certain if conditions did not change.  Germany had no reason at all for making war on France from the time that it had got well ahead of that country in industry, commerce and navigation.  It is true that there were a certain number of unbalanced people in the metal industry who talked complacently of French iron and stirred up the yellow press, just as in France to-day there are many industrials with their eyes fixed on German coal which they want to seize as far as possible.  But the intellectuals, the politicians, even military circles, had no anxiety at all except with regard to Russia.

There were mistaken views in German policy, no doubt, but at the same time there was real anxiety about her national existence.  With a huge population and limited resources, with few colonies, owing to her late arrival in the competition for them, Germany looked on the never-ceasing desire of Russia for Constantinople as the ruin of her policy of expansion in the East.

And in actual fact there was but one way by which the three great Empires, which in population and extension of territory dominated the greater part of Europe, could avoid war, and that was to join in alliance among themselves or at least not to enter other alliances.  The three great Empires divided themselves into two allied groups.  From that moment, given the fact that in each of them the military caste held power, that the principal decisions lay in the hands of a few men not responsible to parliament; given the fact that Russia, faithful to her traditional policy, aimed to draw into her political orbit all the Slav peoples right down to the Adriatic and the Aegean and Austria, was leaning toward the creation of a third Slav monarchy in the dual kingdom, it was inevitable that sooner or later the violence, intrigue and corruption with which we are familiar should culminate in open conflict.  Bismarck always saw that putting Russia and Germany up against each other meant war.