]

[Footnote 8: _Dispatch from His Majesty's Ambassador at Berlin
respecting the rupture of diplomatic relations with the German
Government_ (Cd. 7445), Miscellaneous, no. 8, 1914.]

[Footnote 9: _Correspondence respecting the European Crisis_, p. 62, no.
116. July 31, 1914. See also _infra_ pp. 82 _et seqq_.]

CHAPTER II

THE GROWTH OF ALLIANCES AND THE RACE OF ARMAMENTS SINCE 1871

Even at the risk of being tedious it is essential that we should sketch
in outline the events which have produced the present grouping of
belligerent states, and the long-drawn-out preparations which have
equipped them for conflict on this colossal scale. To understand why
Austria-Hungary and Germany have thrown down the glove to France and
Russia, why England has intervened not only as the protector of Belgium,
but also as the friend of France, we must go back to the situation
created by the Franco-German War. Starting from that point, we must
notice in order the formation of the Triple Alliance between Germany,
Austria-Hungary, and Italy, of the Dual Alliance between France and
Russia, of the Anglo-French and the Anglo-Russian understandings. The
Triple Alliance has been the grand cause of the present situation; not
because such a grouping of the Central European Powers was
objectionable, but because it has inspired over-confidence in the two
leading allies; because they have traded upon the prestige of their
league to press their claims East and West with an intolerable disregard
for the law of nations. Above all it was the threatening attitude of
Germany towards her Western neighbours that drove England forward step
by step in a policy of precautions which, she hoped, would avert a
European conflagration, and which her rivals have attempted to represent
as stages in a Machiavellian design to ruin Germany's well-being. These
precautions, so obviously necessary that they were continued and
expanded by the most pacific Government which England has seen since Mr.
Gladstone's retirement, have taken two forms: that of diplomatic
understandings, and that of naval preparations. Whichever form they have
taken, they have been adopted in response to definite provocations, and
to threats which it was impossible to overlook. They have been strictly
and jealously measured by the magnitude of the peril immediately in
view. In her diplomacy England has given no blank cheques; in her
armaments she has cut down expenditure to the minimum tha