y as rather the dream
of minds detached from practical affairs, as preposterous private
conceptions of German destiny, than as the actual plans of
responsible rulers; but the rulers of Germany themselves knew all the
while what concrete plans, what well-advanced intrigues, lay back of
what the professors and the writers were saying, and were glad to go
forward unmolested, filling the thrones of Balkan states with German
princes, putting German officers at the service of Turkey to drill
her armies and make interest with her Government, developing plans of
sedition and rebellion in India and Egypt, setting their fires in
Persia. The demands made by Austria upon Serbia were a mere single
step in a plan which compassed Europe and Asia, from Berlin to
Bagdad. They hoped those demands might not arouse Europe, but they
meant to press them whether they did or not, for they thought
themselves ready for the final issue of arms.

THE PLAN OF CONQUEST

Their plan was to throw a broad belt of German military power and
political control across the very center of Europe and beyond the
Mediterranean into the very heart of Asia; and Austria-Hungary was to
be as much their tool and pawn as Serbia or Bulgaria or Turkey or the
ponderous states of the East. Austria-Hungary, indeed, was to become
part of the central German Empire, absorbed and dominated by the same
forces and influences that had originally cemented the German states
themselves. The dream had its heart at Berlin. It could have had a
heart nowhere else! It rejected the idea of solidarity of race
entirely. The choice of peoples played no part in it at all. It
contemplated binding together racial and political units which could
be kept together only by force--Czechs, Magyars, Croats, Serbs,
Rumanians, Turks, Armenians--the proud states of Bohemia and Hungary,
the stout little commonwealths of the Balkans, the indomitable Turks,
the subtile peoples of the East. These peoples did not wish to be
united. They ardently desired to direct their own affairs, would be
satisfied only by undisputed independence. They could be kept quiet
only by the presence or the constant threat of armed men. They would
live under a common power only by sheer compulsion and await the day
of revolution. But the German military statesmen had reckoned with
all that and were ready to deal with it in their own way.

And they have actually carried the greater part of that amazing plan
into execution! Look