her troops. In 1904, at the outbreak of the war against
Japan, the Russian soldiers had become so drunk that it was many weeks
before they could be gotten into any kind of military shape. But at
the outbreak of the great "world-war" the order of the Czar which
stopped the sale of strong drink changed all of Prussia's plans.
Instead of taking two or three months to assemble her army, Russia had
her troops marching in a mighty force through the German province of
East Prussia three weeks after the war had opened. The result was that
the German soldiers had to be sent back from northern France to stop
the victorious march of the Slavs. The battle of the Marne, fought in
the first week of September, 1914, decided the fate of the world. It
hung in the balance long enough to prove that a small addition to the
forces on either side might have made all the difference in the world
in the final outcome. The little British army, which was less than
one-eighth of the force of the Allied side, probably furnished the
factor that defeated the Germans. The presence in the battle of the
German troops who had been withdrawn to stop the Russians, might have
given victory to the invaders.

Germany made a mistake, also, in expecting Italy to join in the attack
on France. Any one of these three factors might have won the war in
short order for the forces of Austria and Germany. With France
crushed, as she might have been, in spite of her heroic resistance,
without the help of the tiny British army, or with the intervention of
Italy on the side of her former allies, it would have been no
difficult task for the combined forces of Germany and Austria to pound
the vast Russian armies into confusion, collect a big indemnity from
both France and Russia, and be back home, as the Kaiser had promised,
before the leaves fell from the trees.

As has been said, the great majority of the citizens in nations where
the people rule, could not believe that in this day and age the rulers
of any civilized country would deliberately plot robbery and piracy on
so grand a scale. They had looked forward to the time when all nations
might disarm and live in peace with their neighbors. In France alone,
of all the western nations, was there any clear idea of the Prussian
plan. France, having learned the temper of the Prussian war lords in
1870, France, burdened by a national debt heaped high by the big
indemnity collected by the Germans in '71, looked in apprehensio