to the extent of $650,000,000. It is a matter of knowledge
that many of the Russian munition orders were either financed or
indorsed by British capital. In a word, while England's military
mobilization of her regular troops was rapid and efficient, and
while her recruiting of volunteers was the greatest support of the
principles of a volunteer army that could ever be imagined, the
chief importance and the chief wonder of Britain's mobilization was
her mobilization of commerce and of trade. She made it possible for
French soldiers to be used at their full power, and France's
perennial weakness--supply organization--was supplemented by that
very thing which is the British army's chief boast.

It is time, now, to turn to the eastern theatre of war, and there
the diplomatic questions underlying mobilization become excessively
intertwined. All European powers watch each other like falcons above
their prey, in the constant endeavor to discern the slightest sign
of unusual military activity. The tornado of conflicting reports at
the end of July, 1914, as to which power had begun mobilizing first,
as to whether army maneuvers were a cloak for mobilization, as to
whether activity in arsenals was not a threat or as to the
manipulation of finances, were all due to a single thing--the
knowledge that a week's advantage in mobilization might mean a huge
advantage, an advantage in position so great that thousands of
lives might be lost because of the two days' delay. It has been
shown how the conquest of France's richest northern provinces by
Germany was due to the difference in speed of mobilization. There
was a great deal of misunderstanding on the part of the American
public about this very importance of mobilization. "Supposing Russia
did mobilize first, or Austria," people said, "what about it? No one
has declared war." Mobilization is like two western desperadoes
watching each other. They do not wait until the other man has drawn
his gun and has them covered, but trouble begins at the slightest
move toward the hip pocket. Any move toward mobilization is a move
toward a nation's hip pocket.

[Illustration: German Confederation of 1815.]

Germany did not dare to let Russia mobilize. Had a large Russian
army been concentrated in Poland, had Russia been allowed to
intrench herself on the Austrian frontier, had she had the
opportunity at the beginning of the war to seize the fortress of
Thorn and to secure control of the Vistula