tieth century, like the German wars of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was carefully planned and prepared
by the military rulers of Prussia. To elucidate its origins and causes
will be the work of many long years. Yet enough is known to make it
certain that this last and greatest war conforms to the old design. The
Prussians have always been proud of their doctrine of war, and have
explained it to the world with perfect frankness. War has always been
regarded by them as the great engine of national progress. By war they
united the peoples of Germany; by war they hoped to gain for the peoples
of Germany an acknowledged supremacy in the civilized world. These
peoples had received unity at the hands of Prussia, and though they did
not like Prussia, they believed enthusiastically in Prussian strength
and Prussian wisdom. If Prussia led them to war, they were encouraged to
think that the war would be unerringly designed to increase their power
and prosperity. Yet many of them would have shrunk from naked assault
and robbery; and Prussia, to conciliate these, invented the fable of the
war of defence. That a sudden attack on her neighbours, delivered by
Germany in time of peace, is a strictly defensive act has often been
explained by German military and political writers, never perhaps more
clearly than in a secret official report, drawn up at Berlin in the
spring of 1913, on the strengthening of the German army. A copy of this
report fell into the hands of the French.

'The people,' it says, 'must be accustomed to think that an offensive
war on our part is a necessity.... We must act with prudence in order to
arouse no suspicion.'

The fable of the war of defence was helped out with the fable of
encirclement. Germany, being situated in the midst of Europe, had many
neighbours, most of whom had more reason to fear her than to like her.
Any exhibition of goodwill between these neighbours was treated by
German statesmen, for years before the war, as a covert act of hostility
to Germany, amply justifying reprisals. The treaty between France and
Russia, wholly defensive in character, the expression of goodwill
between France and England, inspired in part by fears of the restless
ambitions of Germany, though both were intended to guarantee the
existing state of things, were odious to Berlin. The peace of Europe
hung by a thread.

On Sunday, the 28th of June 1914, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir
to the throne of Aus