head against her enemies on two frontiers, the Russian and the French,
and diminish perhaps her own forces to aid the Austrian army. In these
conditions they do not find it surprising that the German Empire should
have felt it necessary to increase the number of its Army Corps. They add
at the Foreign Office that the Government of Berlin had frankly explained
to the Cabinet of Paris the precise motives of its action.

Whether this is a complete account of the motives of the German Government
in introducing the law of 1913 cannot be definitely established. But the
motives suggested are adequate by themselves to account for the facts.
On the other hand, a part of the cost of the new law was to be defrayed
by a tax on capital. And those who believe that by this year Germany was
definitely waiting an occasion to make war have a right to dwell upon that
fact. I find, myself, nothing conclusive in these speculations. But what
is certain, and to my mind much more important, is the fact that military
preparations evoke counter-preparations, until at last the strain becomes
unbearable. By 1913 it was already terrific. The Germans knew well that
by January 1917 the French and Russian preparations would have reached
their culminating point. But those preparations were themselves almost
unendurable to the French.

I may recall here the passage already cited from a dispatch of Baron
Guillaume, Belgian Ambassador at Paris, written in June 1914 (p. 34).
He suspected, as we saw, that the hand of Russia had imposed the three
years' service upon France.

What Baron Guillaume thought plausible must not the Germans have thought
plausible? Must it not have confirmed their belief in the "inevitability"
of a war--that belief which, by itself, has been enough to produce war
after war, and, in particular, the war of 1870? Must there not have been