when war was finally declared, Germany's plan of campaign allotted an
important role to Turkey not in a possible emergency, but at a date to
be determined by the completion of her military and naval equipment.

In this ingenious and comprehensive way, operating at a multitude of
points, but never dissociating economics from politics, never
abandoning the work of commercial expansion to the unaided resources
of individuals, the Teutonic empires contrived to spread a huge net in
whose meshes almost every civilized nation was to some extent
entangled. And the subsequent political conduct of many of these was
determined in advance by the plight to which they had been thus
reduced. Russia was reasonably believed to be incapable of taking the
field; Italy was accounted wholly unfitted to bear the weight of the
financial burden which a conflict with Germany would lay upon her
shoulders; Roumania, it was calculated, would decline to exchange
material gains for political returns purchased at a heavy cost;
Bulgaria could not afford to estrange Austria's sympathies and need
never fear that she might forfeit those of Russia; Sweden, saturated
with German Kultur, was one of the foreposts of Teutonism in the north
of Europe and might in time be induced to imitate Bulgaria and play
for the hegemony of the Scandinavian States with the Kaiser's help;
Switzerland was virtually German in everything but political
organization; Holland would believe in Prussianism and tremble;
Belgium was economically a pawn in German hands and Antwerp a German
port; and in the United States millions of hyphenated Germans would
plead the Teuton cause and do the rough work of advancing it by means
of their political organization and influence.

CHAPTER XI

THE RIVAL POLICIES

In face of this Teutonic control of the world's trade, politics and
news supply, the Great Powers whose outlook, political and economic,
was most nearly affected, exhibited a degree of supineness which can
only be adequately explained by such assumptions as one would gladly
eliminate. Anyhow the lessons conveyed by eloquent facts fell upon
deaf ears. Yet it was manifest, in view of Germany's ingenious
combination of economics and politics, and the irresistible
co-operation of the State and individuals in applying it, that the
slipshod methods of Britain and France could no longer be persisted in
without grave danger to these states. To deal with trade and industry
as thoug