ments were in exactly the right position for use against the
fortresses of Germany's foes. Advertisements and shop-signs were used by
spies as guides for the marching German armies of invasion.

[Illustration: Painting of KAISER WILLIAM II.]
Copyright Press Illustrating Service.
KAISER WILLIAM II OF GERMANY
Posterity will regard him as more responsible than any other human
being for the sacrifice of millions of lives in the great war, as a
ruler who might have been beneficent and wise, but attempted to
destroy the liberties of mankind and to raise on their ruins an odious
despotism. To forgive him and to forget his terrible transgressions
would be to condone them.

[Illustration: Men marching past a band.]
Copyright Underwood and Underwood, N, Y.
FRANCIS JOSEPH I OF AUSTRIA, THE "OLD EMPEROR," ON A STATE OCCASION.
Francis Joseph died before the war had settled the fate of the
Hapsburgs. The end came on November 21, 1916, in the sixty-eighth year
of his reign. His life was tragic. He lived to see his brother
executed, his Queen assassinated, and his only son a suicide, with
always before him the specter of the disintegration of his many-raced
empire.

In brief, Germany had planned for war. She was approximately ready for
it. Under the shelter of such high-sounding phrases as "We demand our
place in the sun," and "The seas must be free," the German people were
educated into the belief that the hour of Germany's destiny was at hand.

[Illustration: Map of Africa.]
GERMANY'S POSSESSIONS IN AFRICA PRIOR TO 1914

German psychologists, like other German scientists, had co-operated with
the imperial militaristic government for many years to bring the
Germanic mind into a condition of docility. So well did they understand
the mentality and the trends of character of the German people that it
was comparatively easy to impose upon them a militaristic system and
philosophy by which the individual yielded countless personal liberties
for the alleged good of the state. Rigorous and compulsory military
service, unquestioning adherence to the doctrine that might makes right
and a cession to "the All-Highest," as the Emperor was styled, of
supreme powers in the state, are some of the sufferances to which the
German people submitted.

German propaganda abroad was quite as vigorous as at home, but
infinitely less successful. The German High Command did not expect
England to enter the war.