apparently also of giving some concessions to Servia and Montenegro, the two small States which, for reasons altogether disconnected with the formal aspect of the case, resented the annexation.  Neither of the Western Powers had any such interest in the matter as to make it in the least probable that they would in any case be prepared to support their view by force, while Austria, by mobilising her army, showed that she was ready to do so, and there was no doubt that she was assured, in case of need, of Germany’s support.  The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs publicly explained to his countrymen that Russia was not in a condition to carry on a war.  Accordingly in the moment of crisis the Russian Government withdrew its opposition to Austro-Hungarian policy, and thus once more was revealed the effect upon a political decision of the military strength, readiness, and determination of the two central Powers.

A good deal of feeling was aroused, at any rate in Great Britain, by the disclosure in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as in the earlier case of Morocco, of Germany’s policy, and in the later negotiation of her determination to support Austria-Hungary by force.  Yet he would be a rash man who, on now looking back, would assert that in either case a British Government would have been justified in armed opposition to Germany’s policy.

The bearing of Germany and Austria-Hungary in these negotiations, ending as they did at the time when the debate on the Navy Estimates disclosed to the British public the serious nature of the competition in naval shipbuilding between Germany and Great Britain, was to a large class in this country a startling revelation of the too easily forgotten fact that a nation does not get its way by asking for it, but by being able and ready to assert its will by force of arms in case of need.  There is no reason to believe that the German Government has any intention to enter into a war except for the maintenance of rights or interests held to be vital for Germany, but it is always possible that Germany may hold vital some right or interest which another nation may be not quite ready to admit.  In that case it behoves the other nation very carefully to scrutinise the German claims and its own way of regarding them, and to be quite sure, before entering into a dispute, that its own views are right and Germany’s views wrong, as well as that it has the means, in case of conflict, of carrying on with success a war against the German Empire.

If then England is to enter into a quarrel with Germany or any other State, let her people take care that it arises from no obscure issue about which they may disagree among themselves, but from some palpable wrong done by the other Power, some wrong which calls upon them to resist it with all their might.