German militarism was too formidable a factor in the life of 65,000,000 of the most capable people in Europe to be lightly assailed even by France and Russia combined.  Russia needed money to perfect the machinery of invasion, so sorely tried by the disastrous failure to invade Korea and Manchuria.  France had the money to advance, but she still doubted the ability of her stagnant population of 40,000,000 to face the growing magnitude of the great people across the Rhine.  It needed another guarantee—­and England brought it.

From the day that Great Britain and her mighty fleet joined the separated allies with their mighty armies, the bond between them and the circle round Germany grew taut.  From that day the counsels of the allies and their new found “friend” thickened and quickened.  The immovable “menace across the Rhine” in one case had become the active “menace across the North Sea” in the other case.

The sin of German militarism was at last out.  It could take to the water as kindly as to the land.  As long as the war machine guaranteed the inviolability of German territory it was no threat to European peace, but when it assumed the task of safe-guarding German rights at sea it became the enemy of civilization.  These trading people not content with an army that kept French “revanche” discreetly silent and Slav “unity” a dream of the future presumed to have a sea-born commerce that grew by leaps and bounds, and they dared to build a navy to defend and even to extend it. Delenda est Carthago! From that day the doom of “German militarism” was sealed; and England, democratic England, lay down with the Czar in the same bed to which the French housewife had already transferred her republican counterpane.

The duration of peace became only a question of time, and the war of to-day only a question of opportunity and pretext.  Each of the parties to the understanding had the same clear purpose to serve, and while the aim to each was different the end was the same.  Germany’s power of defence must be destroyed.  That done each of the sleeping partners to the unsigned compact would get the share of the spoils, guarded by armed German manhood, he coveted.

To Russia, the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary and the incorporation of the Slav elements in part into her own vast empire, in part into a vassal and subordinate Balkan Confederacy.

To France the restoration of Lorraine, with Metz, and of Alsace with Strasburg and their 1,500,000 of German speaking Teutons to the French Empire.

To England, the destruction of German sea-power and along with it the permanent crippling of German competition in the markets of the world.

Incidentally German colonies would disappear along with German shipping, and with both gone a German navy would become a useless burden for a nation of philosophers to maintain, so that the future status of maritime efficiency in Europe could be left to the power that polices the seas to equitably fix for all mankind, as well as for the defeated rival.