le into the hands of its enemies. The people
who governed Germany for so long have no right to complain now of the
conditions in which their country is placed. But the great German
people, hardworking and persevering, has full right to look on such
conditions as the negation of justice. The head of a European State, a
man of the clearest view and calmest judgment, speaking to me of the
Emperor William, of whose character and intellect he thought very
little, expressed the view that the Emperor did not want war, but that
he would not avoid it when he had the chance.

The truth is that Germany troubled itself very little about France.
Kinderlen Waechter, the most intelligent of the German Foreign
Ministers, and perhaps the one most opposed to the War, when he
outlined to me the situation as it was ten years ago, showed no
anxiety at all except in regard to Russia. Russia might make war, and
it was necessary to be ready or to see that it came about at a moment
when victory was certain if conditions did not change. Germany had no
reason at all for making war on France from the time that it had got
well ahead of that country in industry, commerce and navigation. It
is true that there were a certain number of unbalanced people in the
metal industry who talked complacently of French iron and stirred up
the yellow press, just as in France to-day there are many industrials
with their eyes fixed on German coal which they want to seize as far
as possible. But the intellectuals, the politicians, even military
circles, had no anxiety at all except with regard to Russia.

There were mistaken views in German policy, no doubt, but at the same
time there was real anxiety about her national existence. With a huge
population and limited resources, with few colonies, owing to her
late arrival in the competition for them, Germany looked on the
never-ceasing desire of Russia for Constantinople as the ruin of her
policy of expansion in the East.

And in actual fact there was but one way by which the three great
Empires, which in population and extension of territory dominated
the greater part of Europe, could avoid war, and that was to join in
alliance among themselves or at least not to enter other alliances.
The three great Empires divided themselves into two allied groups.
From that moment, given the fact that in each of them the military
caste held power, that the principal decisions lay in the hands of a
few men not responsible to par