Coming then to the five great combatants, we can quickly reduce them
to four. Austria-Hungary and Germany in this war are indivisible.
While each may have varying aims on many points and ambitions that,
perhaps, widely diverge both have one common bond, self-preservation,
that binds them much more closely together than mere formal "allies."
In this war Austria fights of necessity as a Germanic Power, although
the challenge to her has been on the ground of her Slav obligations
and activities. Germany is compelled to support Austria by a law of
necessity that a glance at the map of Europe explains. Hence, for
the purpose of the argument, we may put the conflict as between the
Germanic peoples of Central Europe and those who have quarreled with
them.

We thus arrive at the question, "why should such strangely consorted
allies as England, Russia and France be at war with the German
people?"

The answer is not to be found in the White Book, or in any statement
publicly put forward by Great Britain, Russia or France.

But the answer must be found, if we would find the causes of the war,
and if we would hope to erect any lasting peace on the ruins of this
world conflict.

To accept, as an explanation of the war the statement that Germany
has a highly trained army she has not used for nearly half a century
and that her people are so obsessed with admiration for it that they
longed to test it on their neighbours, is to accept as an explanation
a stultifying contradiction. It is of course much easier to put
the blame on the Kaiser. This line of thought is highly popular: it
accords, too, with a fine vulgar instinct.

The German people can be spared the odium of responsibility for a
war they clearly did nothing to provoke, by representing them as the
victims of an autocracy, cased in mail and beyond their control.
We thus arrive at "the real crime against Germany," which explains
everything but the thing it set out to explain. It leaves unexplained
the real crime against Europe.

To explain the causes of the war we must find the causes of the
alliances of England, France and Russia against Germany.

For the cause of the war is that alliance--that and nothing else. The
defence of the _Entente Cordiale_ is that it is an innocent pact of
friendship, designed only to meet the threat of the Triple Alliance.
But the answer to that is that whereas the Triple Alliance was formed
thirty years ago, it has never declared war on a