e vast trade-interests of Germany come into conflict, or
seemed to come into conflict, with the trade-interests of the
surrounding nations--had not the financial greed of the nation been
stirred, as well as its military vanity.

And talking of general trade and finance, one must not forget to include
the enormous powers exercised in the present day by individual
corporations and individual financiers who intrude their operations into
the sphere of politics. We saw _that_ in our own Boer War; and behind
the scenes in Germany to-day similar influences are at work. The
Deutsche Bank, with immense properties all over the world, and some
L85,000,000 sterling in its hands in deposits alone, initiated
financially the Baghdad Railway scheme. Its head, Herr Arthur von
Gwinner, the great financier, is a close adviser of the Kaiser. "The
railway is already nearly half built, and it represents a German
investment of between L16,000,000 and L18,000,000. Let this be thought
of when people imagine that Germany and Austria went to war with the
idea of avenging the murder of an Archduke.... All German trade would
suffer if the Baghdad Railway scheme were to fail."[5] Then there is
Herr August Thyssen--"King Thyssen"--who owns coalmines, rolling mills,
harbours, and docks throughout Germany, iron-ore mines in France,
warehouses in Russia, and _entrepots_ in nearly every country from
Brazil and Argentina to India.[6] He has declared that German interests
in Asia Minor must be safeguarded at all costs. But Russia also has
large prospective commercial interests in Asia Minor. The moral is clear
and needs no enforcing. Such men as these--and many others, the
Rathenaus, Siemens, Krupps, Ballins, and Heinekens--exercise in Germany
an immense political influence, just as do our financial magnates at
home. They represent the peaks and summits of wide-spreading commercial
activities whose bases are rooted among the general public. Yet through
it all it must not be forgotten that they represent in each case (as I
shall explain more clearly presently) the interests of a _class_--the
commercial class--but not of the whole nation.

One must, then, modify the first conclusion, that the blame of the war
rests with the military class, by adding a second factor, namely, the
rise and influence of the commercial class. These two classes, acting
and reacting on each other, and pushing--though for different
reasons--in the same direction, are answerable, as