suspected the influence of Russia; it was, they said, a scheme for bringing Russia down to a sea which Austria regarded as her own preserve.  Austria mobilized her army, and a war could hardly have been avoided but for the mediation of Germany and England.  If England had entertained the malignant designs with which she is credited in some German circles, nothing would have been easier for her than to fan the flames, and to bring Russia down upon the Triple Alliance.  The notes show how different from this were the aims of Sir Edward Grey.  He evidently foresaw that a war between Austria and Russia would result in a German attack upon France.  Not content with giving France assurance of support, he laboured to remove the root of the evil.  A congress to settle the Balkan disputes was held at London in December, 1912; and it persuaded Servia to accept a reasonable compromise, by which she obtained commercial access to the Adriatic, but no port.  This for the moment pacified Austria and averted the world-war.  To whom the solution was due we know from the lips of German statesmen.  The German Chancellor subsequently (April 7, 1913) told the Reichstag:—­

’A state of tension had for months existed between Austria-Hungary and Russia which was only prevented from developing into war by the moderation of the Powers....  Europe will feel grateful to the English Minister of Foreign Affairs for the extraordinary ability and spirit of conciliation with which he conducted the discussion of the Ambassadors in London, and which constantly enabled him to bridge over differences.’

The Chancellor concluded by saying:  ’We at any rate shall never stir up such a war’—­a promise or a prophecy which has been singularly falsified.

It is no easy matter to understand the line of conduct which Germany has adopted towards the great Slavonic Power on her flank.  Since Bismarck left the helm, she has sometimes steered in the direction of subservience, and sometimes has displayed the most audacious insolence.  Periodically, it is to be supposed, her rulers have felt that in the long run the momentum of a Russian attack would be irresistible; at other times, particularly after the Russo-Japanese War, they have treated Russia, as the Elizabethans treated Spain, as ’a colossus stuffed with clouts.’  But rightly or wrongly they appear to have assumed that sooner or later there must come a general Armageddon, in which the central feature would be a duel of the Teuton with the Slav; and in German military circles there was undoubtedly a conviction that the epic conflict had best come sooner and not later.  How long this idea has influenced German policy we do not pretend to say.  But it has certainly contributed to her unenviable prominence in the ‘race of armaments’ which all thinking men have condemned as an insupportable, tax upon Western civilization, and which has aggravated all the evils that it was intended to avert.