ence and much more strengthened by the influence
of the universities and of religious leaders--though some contempt for
and alienation from the French had become of increasing note in English
public utterances and literature, yet Great Britain retained upon the
whole the Western doctrine of civilization and of its traditions.

The increasing German reaction against those traditions, particularly in
morals, was not wholly sympathetic to the temper of the gentry, at least
in England, and was sometimes exasperating.

All nations have cynically violated treaties at one time or another, but
there is about a solemnly undertaken treaty by the great European powers
and affecting the happiness of the smaller neutral States something
particularly sacred. And though it must not for one moment be regarded
as the principal cause of the war, it is true that the crudity of
Prussia's neglect of treaties, the too simple fashion in which Prussia
proposed a breach of international obligations in the matter of Belgium,
did affect the conscience of not a few powerful men in England, and,
what is perhaps more important, furnished a definite and concrete point
on which the doubtful issue of peace or war could repose.

It must be remembered in this connection that Prussia had a novel
tradition of her own in such matters. The phrase "The Frederickian
tradition" is an accurate phrase. Frederick the Great did start the open
and avowed doctrine that a breach of international convention and of
international morals is always tolerable in the aggrandizement of one's
country.

I think one is not telling the truth if one says that the proposed
violation of Belgian territory for the invasion of France was of a
nature to cause an explosion of anger in the very hardened minds of the
professional politicians in any modern country. There is not one group
of them that has not been guilty of something of the sort before. But I
think one is telling the truth if one says that the over-simple and cold
way in which Prussia took it for granted that the violation of a solemn
and most important treaty was nothing just shocked opinion, even of the
politicians, sufficiently to help to incline the balance against her.

There is much more. The Prussian estimate of Russian, of French, and
even of English psychology was very erroneous. The Prussian way of
getting France not to join is about as subtle as spitting in a man's
face, and the elephantine gambols of the Germ