journals
consider that the French Government, in declaring itself ready to impose
three years' service, and in nominating M. Delcasse to St. Petersburg,
has adopted the only attitude worthy of the great Republic in presence
of a German provocation. At the Foreign Office I found a more just and
calm appreciation of the position. They see in the reinforcement of
the German armies less a provocation than the admission of a military
situation weakened by events and which it is necessary to strengthen.
The Government of Berlin sees itself obliged to recognize that it cannot
count, as before, on the support of all the forces of its Austrian ally,
since the appearance in South-east Europe of a new Power, that of the
Balkan allies, established on the very flank of the Dual Empire. Far
from being able to count, in case of need, on the full support of the
Government of Vienna, it is probable that Germany will have to support
Vienna herself. In the case of a European war she would have to make
head against her enemies on two frontiers, the Russian and the French,
and diminish perhaps her own forces to aid the Austrian army. In these
conditions they do not find it surprising that the German Empire should
have felt it necessary to increase the number of its Army Corps. They add
at the Foreign Office that the Government of Berlin had frankly explained
to the Cabinet of Paris the precise motives of its action.

Whether this is a complete account of the motives of the German Government
in introducing the law of 1913 cannot be definitely established. But the
motives suggested are adequate by themselves to account for the facts.
On the other hand, a part of the cost of the new law was to be defrayed
by a tax on capital. And those who believe that by this year Germany was
definitely waiting an occasion to make war have a right to dwell upon that
fact. I find, myself, nothing conclusive in these speculations. But what
is certain, and to my mind much more important, is the fact that military
preparations evoke counter-preparations, until at last the strain becomes
unbearable. By 1913 it was already terrific. The Germans knew well that
by January 1917 the French and Russian preparations would have reached
their culminating point. But those preparations were themselves almost
unendurable to the French.

I may recall here the passage already cited from a dispatch of Baron
Guillaume, Belgian Ambassador at