ot one kopeck for indemnity." He won out and returned in
triumph to Russia.

But during the progress of the Japanese war Germany thrust her
commercial treaties upon St. Petersburg. Goods from Russia into
Germany were taxed while German goods went under favorable terms into
Russia, with the result that Russia has had a struggle now for ten
years to keep her gold basis and her financial exchanges.

It was Witte who was sent to Berlin to protest against these proposed
treaties and secure more favorable terms. Witte made his protest and
refused to accept the German demands. Then suddenly he received
peremptory orders from the Czar to grant all the demands of Germany.
The Czar declared Russia was in no condition to have trouble with
Germany. These commercial treaties expire within two years. Russia
many months back proposed the discussion of new terms. Germany
responded that the present treaties were satisfactory to her and he
should call for their renewal.

This meant either further humiliation to Russia or war. Russia had
already suffered the affront of being forced by Germany at the point of
the bayonet to assent to the taking by Austria of Bosnia and
Herzegovina in violation of the Treaty of Berlin. The Czar realized
many months ago that Russia must now fight for her commercial life.
She would not, however, be ready for the war until 1916.

Let Americans consider what this means--a German war over commercial
tariffs--and see what, if successful in Europe, it would lead to.

The German nation is a fighting unit under the dominion of Prussia, the
greatest war state, not only of the empire, but of the world. Having
welded Germany by the Franco-Prussian war into a nation with unified
tariffs, transportation, currency, and monetary systems, Prussia has
been able to point to the war as the cause of the phenomenal prosperity
of Germany.

It is a popular fallacy in Germany that militarism makes the greatness
of a nation. Germany's prosperity did not begin with the war of 1870.
This was only the beginning of German unity which made possible unified
transportation and later unified finances and tariffs. Several years
after the war, France, which had paid an indemnity to Germany of a
thousand million dollars, or five billion francs, was found, to the
astonishment of Bismarck, more prosperous than Germany which had thus
received the expenses of her military campaign and a dot of Spandau
Tower war-reserve moneys.