reins on the necks of men whom up to then it
had held in restraint. The decision appears to have been allowed at this
point to pass from civilians to soldiers. I do not believe that even
then the German Government as a whole intended deliberately to invoke
the frightful consequences of actual war, even if it seemed likely to be
victorious. But I do believe that it elected to take the risk of what
it thought improbable, a general resistance by the Entente Powers if
Germany were to threaten to use her great strength. In thus departing in
1913 from the appearance of self-restraint which in the main they had
displayed up to then, the Emperor and his Ministers misjudged the
situation. They did not foresee the crisis to which their policy was
conducting, and when that crisis arrived they lost their heads and
blundered in trying to deal with it. They did not perceive the whirlpool
toward which they were heading. They thought that they could safely
expose what was precarious to a strain, and secure the substance of a
real victory without having to overcome actual resistance. Had they put
an extreme ambition for their country aside, and been careful in their
language to others, they might have attained a considerable success
without a shot being fired. But they were over ambitious and in their
language they were far from careful. A few unlucky words made all the
difference in the concluding days of July, 1914:

"Ten lines, a statesman's life in each."

We here had done the best we could, according to our lights, to keep
Germany from misjudging us. It was not always easy to do this. The
genius of our people was not well adapted for the particular task. If
the only question to-day were whether we always rendered ourselves
intelligible to her, she might say with some show of reason that we did
not. She might have grumbled, as Bismarck used to do, over our apparent
indefiniteness. But that indefiniteness in policy was only apparent. Its
form was due to the habit of mind which was, what it always has been and
probably always will be, the habit of mind of the people of these
islands. It was the defect of her qualities that prevented Germany from
understanding what this habit of mind truly imported, and we have never
fully taken in at any period of our history how little she has ever
understood it. Let anyone who doubts this read the German memoirs which
have appeared since the war. But it remains not the less true and
obvious that