Consequently, Germany and her friends (except perhaps Turkey) could never hope to have a longer lead over the Entente Powers than in 1914, at least as regards efficiency and preparedness.  Therefore in the eyes of the military party at Berlin the problem resembled that of 1756, which Frederick the Great thus stated:  “The war was equally certain and inevitable.  It only remained to calculate whether there was more advantage in deferring it a few months or beginning at once.”  We know what followed in 1756—­the invasion of neutral Saxony, because she had not completed her armaments[549].  For William II. in 1914 the case of Belgium was very similar.  She afforded him the shortest way of striking at his enemy and the richest land for feeding the German forces.  That Prussia had guaranteed Belgian neutrality counted as naught; that in 1912 Lord Haldane had warned him of the hostility of England if he invaded Belgium was scarcely more important.  William, like his ancestor, acted solely on military considerations.  He despised England:  for was she not distracted by fierce party feuds, by Labour troubles, by wild women, and by what seemed to be the beginnings of civil war in Ireland?  All the able rulers of the House of Hohenzollern have discerned when to strike and to strike hard.  In July 1914 William II.’s action was typically Hohenzollern; and by this time his engaging personality and fiery speeches, aided by professorial and Press propaganda, had thoroughly Prussianised Germany.  In regard to moral as well as materiel, “the day” had come by Midsummer 1914.

[Footnote 549:  Frederic, Hist. de la guerre de sept Ans, i. p. 37.]

Moreover, her generally passive partner, Austria, was then excited to frenzy by the murder of the heir to the throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand.  The criminals were Austrian Serbs; but no proof was then or has since been forthcoming as to the complicity of the Servian Government.  Nevertheless, in the state of acute tension long existing between Servia and Austria-Hungary, the affair seemed the climax of a series of efforts at wrecking the Dual Monarchy and setting up a Serbo-Croatian Kingdom.  Therefore German and Magyar sentiment caught flame, and war with Servia was loudly demanded.  Dr. Dillon, while minimising the question of the murder, prophesied that the quarrel would develop into a gigantic struggle between Teuton and Slav[550].  In this connection we must remember that the Central Empires had twice dictated to the rest of Europe:  first, in the Bosnian crisis of 1908-9; secondly, in the negotiations which led to the Treaty of Bukharest (August 1913).  On other occasions Kaiser William had bent the will of Tsar Nicholas II., notably in the Potsdam interview of November 1910.  It is therefore possible that Berlin reckoned once more on the complaisance of Russia; and in that event Austria would have dragooned Servia and refashioned the Balkan lands at her will, Germany meanwhile “keeping the ring.”  This