came acquainted with a number of leading Democrats, and with a good many others interested in peace, though not on a democratic basis. I was invited to come back to speak in the German cities, and I found time in December... to give lectures in Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Mannheim, Stuttgart, and Munich. Through my friends I learned a good deal of the plans of the Pan Germanists and especially of the German General Staff.

"In brief, they hoped to bring on war in 1914. Presumably, at that time, through disturbances to be created in Alsace-Lorraine. They were then proposing to take Belgium and Holland-Holland for the sake of making Antwerp the center for the coming attack upon England. They wished especially to take the two departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais from France. They proposed to make of Boulogne the great seaport of Germany, surrounding its broad, flat bay with breakwaters, doing all this before England would enter the war, and removing the German fleet to Boulogne. They had a new German name for Boulogne, but I do not find it in my notes and do not recollect it. They were also to take Paris and exact an indemnity that would pay the expenses of the war; 25,000,000 marks was the figure I heard mentioned. After this they were to treat France with great lenience, relieving her of all necessity for maintaining an army and navy and defending her from her great arch-enemy, Great Britain. It was thought

that France being wholly degenerate would not resist, and she could then devote herself to commerce and to the continuing of loans of money to finance German industry..

"I suppose that the Zabern incident and the arrest of 'Oncle Hansi' (Jean Jacques Waltz) were moves in the direction of inciting trouble in Alsace, getting a protest from France to be followed by a sudden ultimatum. The death of the Archduke (Francis Ferdinand, June 28, 1914), whether planned in Budapesth or not, served to make the way to war easier, by beginning it in the southeast.”*

It is probable that William II, still smarting under the slight offered by the Socialists on May 20, 1914, and still chagrined over the outcome of the Morocco question and the Balkan Wars, was as anxious to show his power and re-establish his credit with all parties as he was to humiliate Serbia. It will be plain, moreover, that before Austria issued the ultimatum to Serbia he had decided to risk if not to provoke war with Russia and with France.

* Cf. "The Study of the Great War," by Samuel B. Harding, p. 27.

IN

CHAPTER III

THE OCCASION OF THE WORLD WAR

1914 Europe was in a state of tension which

had lasted six years, and which was beginning "to try the nerves" of the great Powers. More than anything else the movement in the Balkans was responsible for this general restlessness. The situation, especially in view of the increase of armaments in Germany, of which we have already spoken, and the French reply, by increasing the period of military service from two years to three, and the general aggressiveness of Berlin, made war seem imminent. The Balkan Peninsula had become the stormcentre, for, as we have seen, the developments there were threatening to overturn the unfortunate system of balance of power on which European politics had so long rested. Yet in the early stages of the recent war we were inclined to pay too much attention to what was happening in the Balkans primarily, and

have therefore seen the developments that led to the conflict somewhat out of focus.

In July, 1914, the world was trying to look into the future through the passes of the Balkans. Events there which in ordinary times would have been of minor consequence loomed large and portentous. When a Bosnian, Gabrilo Princep, who was an Austrian subject, assassinated the Austrian crown prince, Francis Ferdinand, and his wife, and war followed, it was natural under the circumstances and under the stress of the first shock to attribute the war to Princep's crime. Yet the assassination of the archduke was no more the cause of the war in any philosophical sense than the fly on the telescope is the cause of the great spot on` the sun. It was not the cause of the war, it was merely the occasion. The causes lay deeper as we have already seen. The war would have come in any case; Princep's crime merely made it certain that it must come in 1914. To understand the reasons for this we must take a rapid glance at the situation in the Balkans.

In 1908 Austria-Hungary had annexed Bos

nia and Herzegovina, violating by this act Article XXV of the Congress of Berlin. Russia, which was inclined to assume the attitude of protector to the Slav states, and whose interests under the Congress of Berlin had been disregarded, had at that time not yet recovered from the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5, and was forced to acquiesce when the Kaiser boldly proclaimed that he "took his stand in shining armor by the side of his ally." Little Serbia was, therefore, forced to submit, though the discontent at the action of Austria-Hungary was about as keen in the annexed provinces as it was in the kingdom of Serbia itself. This tension, which was the result of a violation of the principle of national self-determination, was bound to continue and to increase. France and England, who had already come to an entente cordiale after the settlement of the Egyptian question, refused to go to war over this increase of Austro-Hungarian influence. In 1911 came the second Morocco crisis, which, as we have seen, had particularly embittered Germany and aroused particular resentment in the German military party. But the great surprise