patriotism apprehensively concerned with defence.  It was supported by powerful moneyed interests; and the mass of the people, passive, ill-informed, preoccupied, were defenceless against its agitation.  The German Government found the Pangermans embarrassing or convenient according as the direction of its policy and the European situation changed from crisis to crisis.  They were thus at one moment negligible, at another powerful.  For long they agitated vainly, and they might long have continued to do so.  But if the moment should come at which the Government should make the fatal plunge, their efforts would have contributed to the result, their warnings would seem to have been justified, and they would triumph as the party of patriots that had foretold in vain the coming crash to an unbelieving nation.

[Footnote 1:  “L’Enigme Allemande,” 1914.]

[Footnote 2:  See “L’Allemagne avant la guerre,” pp. 97 seq. and 170 seq.  Bruxelles, 1915.]

[Footnote 3:  A Frenchman, M. Maurice Ajam, who made an inquiry among business men in 1913 came to the same conclusion.  “Peace!  I write that all the Germans without exception, when they belong to the world of business, are fanatical partisans of the maintenance of European peace.”  See Yves Guyot, “Les causes et les consequences de la guerre,” p. 226.]

[Footnote 4:  See French Yellow Book, No. 5.]

10. German Policy, from 1890-1900.

Having thus examined the atmosphere of opinion in which the German Government moved, let us proceed to consider the actual course of their policy during the critical years, fifteen or so, that preceded the war.  The policy admittedly and openly was one of “expansion.”  But “expansion” where?  It seems to be rather widely supposed that Germany was preparing war in order to annex territory in Europe.  The contempt of German imperialists, from Treitschke onward, for the rights of small States, the racial theories which included in “German” territory Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries, may seem to give colour to this idea.  But it would be hazardous to assume that German statesmen were seriously influenced for years by the lucubrations of Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain and his followers.  Nor can a long-prepared policy of annexation in Europe be inferred from the fact that Belgium and France were invaded after the war broke out, or even from the present demand among German parties that the territories occupied should be retained.  If it could be maintained that the seizure of territory during war, or even its retention after it, is evidence that the territory was the object of the war, it would be legitimate also to infer that the British Empire has gone to war to annex German colonies, a conclusion which Englishmen would probably reject with indignation.  In truth, before the war, the view that it was the object of German policy to annex European territory would have found, I think, few, if any, supporters among well-informed and unprejudiced observers.  I note, for instance, that Mr. Dawson, whose opinion on such a point is probably better worth having than that of any other Englishman, in his book, “The Evolution of Modern Germany,"[1] when discussing the aims of German policy does not even refer to the idea that annexations in Europe are contemplated.