in an unexpected form, hugely complicated and threatening.  They must have realized the great danger of the situation, but they very likely may have thought that by another piece of bluff similar to that of 1908-9 they might intimidate Russia a second time; and they believed that Russia was behindhand in her military preparations.  They also, it appears, thought that England would not fight, being too much preoccupied with Ireland, India, and other troubles.  And so it may have seemed that Now was the psychological moment.

Austria opened with war on Servia (28th of July), and the next day Russia declared a considerable though not complete mobilization.  From that moment a general conflagration was practically inevitable.  The news of Russia’s warlike movement caused a perfect panic in Berlin.  The tension of feeling swung round completely for the time being from enmity against England and France to fear of Russia.  The final mobilization of the Russian troops (31st of July) was followed by the telegrams between the Kaiser and the Tsar, and by the formal mobilization (really already complete) of the German Army and Navy on the 1st of August.  War was declared at Berlin on the 1st of August, and the same or next day the German forces entered Luxemburg.  On August 4th they entered Belgium, and war was declared by England against Germany.

* * * * *

Looking back at the history of the whole affair, one seems to see, as I have said, a kind of fatality about it.  The great power and vigour of the German peoples, shown by their early history in Europe, had been broken up by the religious and other dissensions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  It fell to Prussia to become the centre of organization for a new Germany.  The rich human and social material of the German States—­their literary, artistic, and scientific culture, their philosophy, their learning—­clustered curiously enough round the hard and military nucleus of the North.  It was perhaps their instinct and, for the time, their salvation to do so.  The new Germany, hemmed in on all sides by foreign Powers, could only see her way to reasonable expansion and recognition, and a field for her latent activities, by the use of force, military force.  A long succession of political philosophers drilled this into her.  She embarked in small wars and always with success.  She became a political unity and a Great Power in Europe.  And then came her commercial triumph.  Riches beyond all expectation flowed in; and a mercantile class arose in her midst whose ideals of life were of a corresponding character—­the ideals of the wealthy shopkeeper.  What wonder that, feeling her power, feeling herself more than ever baulked of her rights, she cast her eyes abroad, and coveted the imperial and commercial supremacy of the world?