rs old" and not enough of those....

Such were the appearances of things. Can it be wondered if it seemed to
the German mind that the moment for the triumphant assertion of the
German predominance in the world had come? A day or so before the Dublin
shooting, the murder of Sarajevo had been dragged again into the
foreground of the world's affairs by an ultimatum from Austria to Serbia
of the extremest violence. From the hour when the ultimatum was
discharged the way to Armageddon lay wide and unavoidable before the
feet of Europe. After the Dublin conflict there was no turning back. For
a week Europe was occupied by proceedings that were little more than the
recital of a formula. Austria could not withdraw her unqualified threats
without admitting error and defeat, Russia could not desert Serbia
without disgrace, Germany stood behind Austria, France was bound to
Russia by a long confederacy of mutual support, and it was impossible
for England to witness the destruction of France or the further
strengthening of a loud and threatening rival. It may be that Germany
counted on Russia giving way to her, it may be she counted on the
indecisions and feeble perplexities of England, both these possibilities
were in the reckoning, but chiefly she counted on war. She counted on
war, and since no nation in all the world had ever been so fully
prepared in every way for war as she was, she also counted on victory.

One writes "Germany." That is how one writes of nations, as though they
had single brains and single purposes. But indeed while Mr. Britling lay
awake and thought of his son and Lady Frensham and his smashed
automobile and Mrs. Harrowdean's trick of abusive letter-writing and of
God and evil and a thousand perplexities, a multitude of other brains
must also have been busy, lying also in beds or sitting in studies or
watching in guard-rooms or chatting belatedly in cafes or smoking-rooms
or pacing the bridges of battleships or walking along in city or
country, upon this huge possibility the crime of Sarajevo had just
opened, and of the state of the world in relation to such possibilities.
Few women, one guesses, heeded what was happening, and of the men, the
men whose decision to launch that implacable threat turned the destinies
of the world to war, there is no reason to believe that a single one of
them had anything approaching the imaginative power needed to understand
fully what it was they were doing. We have looked fo