breaking the peace any formal avowal of other
than a defensive purpose has at all times been avoided as an
insufferable breach of diplomatic decorum. It is likewise characteristic
of the same era that armaments have unremittingly been increased, beyond
anything previously known; and that all men have known all the while
that the inevitable outcome of this avowedly defensive armament must
eventually be war on an unprecedented scale and of unexampled ferocity.
It would be neither charitable nor otherwise to the point to call
attention to the reflection which this state of the case throws on the
collective sagacity or the good faith of the statesmen who have had the
management of affairs. It is not practicable to imagine how such an
outcome as the present could have been brought about by any degree of
stupidity or incapacity alone, nor is it easier to find evidence that
the utmost sagacity of the statecraft engaged has had the slightest
mitigating effect on the evil consummation to which the whole case has
been brought. It has long been a commonplace among observers of public
events that these professedly defensive warlike preparations have in
effect been preparations for breaking the peace; against which, at
least ostensibly, a remedy had been sought in the preparation of still
heavier armaments, with full realisation that more armament would
unfailingly entail a more unsparing and more disastrous war,--which sums
up the statecraft of the past half century.

Prussia, and afterwards Prussianised Germany, has come in for the
distinction of taking the lead and forcing the pace in this competitive
preparation--or "preparedness"--for war in time of peace. That such has
been the case appears in good part to be something of a fortuitous
circumstance. The season of enterprising force and fraud to which that
country owes its induction into the concert of nations is an episode of
recent history; so recent, indeed, that the German nation has not yet
had time to live it down and let it be forgotten; and the Imperial State
is consequently burdened with an irritably uneasy sense of odium and an
established reputation for unduly bad faith. From which it has followed,
among other things, that the statesmen of the Empire have lived in the
expectation of having their unforgotten derelictions brought home, and
so have, on the one hand, found themselves unable to credit any pacific
intentions professed by the neighboring Powers, while on the