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The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife by Edward Carpenter
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Austria opened with war on Servia (28th of July), and the next day
Russia declared a considerable though not complete mobilization. From
that moment a general conflagration was practically inevitable. The news
of Russia's warlike movement caused a perfect panic in Berlin. The
tension of feeling swung round completely for the time being from enmity
against England and France to fear of Russia. The final mobilization of
the Russian troops (31st of July) was followed by the telegrams between
the Kaiser and the Tsar, and by the formal mobilization (really already
complete) of the German Army and Navy on the 1st of August. War was
declared at Berlin on the 1st of August, and the same or next day the
German forces entered Luxemburg. On August 4th they entered Belgium, and
war was declared by England against Germany.

* * * * *

Looking back at the history of the whole affair, one seems to see, as I
have said, a kind of fatality about it. The great power and vigour of
the German peoples, shown by their early history in Europe, had been
broken up by the religious and other dissensions of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. It fell to Prussia to become the centre of
organization for a new Germany. The rich human and social material of
the German States--their literary, artistic, and scientific culture,
their philosophy, their learning--clustered curiously enough round the
hard and military nucleus of the North. It was perhaps their instinct
and, for the time, their salvation to do so. The new Germany, hemmed in
on all sides by foreign Powers, could only see her way to reasonable
expansion and recognition, and a field for her latent activities, by the
use of force, military force. A long succession of political
philosophers drilled this into her. She embarked in small wars and
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