n and the agitation
for woman suffrage continued to occupy public attention in 1912. In
August of that year, 1912, Great Britain joined with France and
Germany in accepting Austria-Hungary's invitation to confer on the
Balkan situation, which was rapidly assuming grave importance. In
conjunction with these powers, as well as Italy and Russia, it
maintained a strict neutrality during the Balkan Wars of 1912 and
1913, just as it had done during the Turko-Italian War of 1911 and
1912. At England's invitation the ambassadors of the powers met in
London in December, 1912, to discuss the Balkan question while the
representatives of the Balkan States and Turkey conferred concerning
peace.

Almost coincident with Germany's increased efforts to upbuild its
navy, a change had been made in the incumbency of the admiralty. One
of the younger and most active members of the Liberal party, Winston
Churchill, a member of the House of Marlborough, became First Lord. He
created a sensation by a speech made in the Commons in March, 1913,
suggesting that Germany and Great Britain should agree to stop naval
construction for a period of a year. Although this proposal received a
great deal of attention, it had no tangible result, and the race for
increased armament continued. Neither 1913 nor 1914 brought about any
diminution in the difficulties regarding the Irish question, in fact
rather the opposite, and the Government even went so far as to
prohibit the importation of arms into Ireland. Armed resistance
against Home Rule on the part of Ulster seemed to be unavoidable.
Agitation in England and Ireland over Home Rule had become so violent
that the murder of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in June,
1914, did not arouse as much interest and attention in England as it
would have done otherwise. Revolution in Ireland was a matter that
England expected at that particular moment, rather than a general
European war. Not until the British fleet, assembled at Portsmouth for
maneuvers, left there on July 29, 1914, under sealed orders, was the
country aroused to the possibility of a world war, which had been
considered for so many years impossible by some and inevitable by
others, and which was now about to break out.

CHAPTER VI

ITALY

In the middle of the nineteenth century the position of Italy was
somewhat analogous to that of Germany. It consisted of a number of
separate states, and, in spite of the fact that all of these s