inventions in explosives, ordnance, munitions, transportation, and sanitation.  At the opening of 1914 the General Staff believed that the German Army was ready for war on the instant, and that it possessed some significant advantages in fighting—­such as better implements and better discipline—­over the armies of the neighboring nations.  The army could do its part toward the attainment of world empire.  It would prove invincible.

A Great German Navy.

The intense desire for colonies, and for the spread of German commerce throughout the world, instigated the creation of a great German navy, and started the race with England in navy building.  The increase of German wealth, and the rapid development of manufactures and commercial sea power after 1870-71, made it possible for the empire to devote immense sums of money to the quick construction of a powerful navy, in which the experience and skill of all other shipbuilding nations would be appropriated and improved on.  In thus pushing her colonization and sea-power policy Germany encountered the wide domination of Great Britain on the oceans; and this encounter bred jealousy, suspicion, and distrust on both sides.  That Germany should have been belated in the quest for foreign possessions was annoying; but that England and France should have acquired early ample and rich territories on other continents, and then should resist or obstruct Germany when she aspired to make up for lost time, was intensely exasperating.  Hence chronic resentments, and—­when the day came—­probably war.  In respect to its navy, however, Germany was not ready for war at the opening of 1914; and, therefore, she did not mean to get into war with Great Britain in that year.  Indeed, she believed—­on incorrect information—­that England could not go to war in the Summer of 1914.  Neither the Government nor the educated class in Germany comprehends the peculiar features of party government as it exists in England, France, and the United States; and, therefore, the German leaders were surprised and grievously disappointed at the sudden popular determination of Great Britain and Ireland to lay aside party strife and take strenuous part in the general European conflict.

The complete preparation of the German Army for sudden war, the authority to make war always ready in the hands of the German Emperor, and the thorough studies of the German Staff into the most advantageous plans of campaign against every neighbor, conspired to develop a new doctrine of “military necessity” as the all-sufficient excuse for disregarding and violating the contracts or agreements into which Prussia or the new Germany had entered with other nations.  To gain quickly a military advantage in attacking a neighbor came to be regarded as proper ground for violating any or all international treaties and agreements, no matter how solemn and comprehensive, how old or how new.  The demonstration of the insignificance or worthlessness of international agreements in German thought and practice was given in the first days of the war by the invasion of Belgium, and has been continued ever since by violation on the part of Germany of numerous agreements concerning the conduct of war into which Germany entered with many other nations at the Second Hague Conference.