ever stir up
such a war'--a promise or a prophecy which has been singularly
falsified.

It is no easy matter to understand the line of conduct which Germany has
adopted towards the great Slavonic Power on her flank. Since Bismarck
left the helm, she has sometimes steered in the direction of
subservience, and sometimes has displayed the most audacious insolence.
Periodically, it is to be supposed, her rulers have felt that in the
long run the momentum of a Russian attack would be irresistible; at
other times, particularly after the Russo-Japanese War, they have
treated Russia, as the Elizabethans treated Spain, as 'a colossus
stuffed with clouts.' But rightly or wrongly they appear to have assumed
that sooner or later there must come a general Armageddon, in which the
central feature would be a duel of the Teuton with the Slav; and in
German military circles there was undoubtedly a conviction that the epic
conflict had best come sooner and not later. How long this idea has
influenced German policy we do not pretend to say. But it has certainly
contributed to her unenviable prominence in the 'race of armaments'
which all thinking men have condemned as an insupportable, tax upon
Western civilization, and which has aggravated all the evils that it was
intended to avert.

The beginning of the evil was perhaps due to France; but, if so, it was
to a France which viewed with just alarm the enormous strides in
population and wealth made by Germany since 1871. The 'Boulanger Law' of
1886 raised the peace footing of the French army above 500,000 men, at a
time when that of Germany was 427,000, and that of Russia 550,000.
Bismarck replied by the comparatively moderate measure of adding 41,000
to the German peace establishment for seven years; and it is significant
of the difference between then and now that he only carried his Bill
after a dissolution of one Reichstag and a forcible appeal to its
successor.

France must soon have repented of the indiscretion to which she had been
tempted by a military adventurer. With a population comparatively small
and rapidly approaching the stationary phase it was impossible that she
could long maintain such a race. In 1893 Count Caprivi's law, carried
like that of Bismarck after a stiff struggle with the Reichstag, raised
the peace establishment to 479,000 men. Count Caprivi at the same time
reduced the period of compulsory service from three years to two; but
while this reform lightened t