The English Press naturally wants to throw upon Germany the responsibility for the new tension which results from its proposals, and which may bring to Europe fresh occasions of unrest.  Many journals consider that the French Government, in declaring itself ready to impose three years’ service, and in nominating M. Delcasse to St. Petersburg, has adopted the only attitude worthy of the great Republic in presence of a German provocation.  At the Foreign Office I found a more just and calm appreciation of the position.  They see in the reinforcement of the German armies less a provocation than the admission of a military situation weakened by events and which it is necessary to strengthen.  The Government of Berlin sees itself obliged to recognize that it cannot count, as before, on the support of all the forces of its Austrian ally, since the appearance in South-east Europe of a new Power, that of the Balkan allies, established on the very flank of the Dual Empire.  Far from being able to count, in case of need, on the full support of the Government of Vienna, it is probable that Germany will have to support Vienna herself.  In the case of a European war she would have to make head against her enemies on two frontiers, the Russian and the French, and diminish perhaps her own forces to aid the Austrian army.  In these conditions they do not find it surprising that the German Empire should have felt it necessary to increase the number of its Army Corps.  They add at the Foreign Office that the Government of Berlin had frankly explained to the Cabinet of Paris the precise motives of its action.

Whether this is a complete account of the motives of the German Government in introducing the law of 1913 cannot be definitely established.  But the motives suggested are adequate by themselves to account for the facts.  On the other hand, a part of the cost of the new law was to be defrayed by a tax on capital.  And those who believe that by this year Germany was definitely waiting an occasion to make war have a right to dwell upon that fact.  I find, myself, nothing conclusive in these speculations.  But what is certain, and to my mind much more important, is the fact that military preparations evoke counter-preparations, until at last the strain becomes unbearable.  By 1913 it was already terrific.  The Germans knew well that by January 1917 the French and Russian preparations would have reached their culminating point.  But those preparations were themselves almost unendurable to the French.

I may recall here the passage already cited from a dispatch of Baron Guillaume, Belgian Ambassador at Paris, written in June 1914 (p. 34).  He suspected, as we saw, that the hand of Russia had imposed the three years’ service upon France.