battle between lions? What were the unseen and unnoted conditions
that, within little more than a week's time, induced all the
leading nations of Europe to cast down the gage of battle and
spring full-armed into the arena, bent upon a struggle which
threatened to surpass any that the world had ever seen? Certainly
no trifling causes were here involved. Only great and
far-reaching causes could have brought about such a catastrophe.
All Europe appeared to be sitting, unknowingly or knowingly, upon
a powder barrel which only needed some inconsequent hand to apply
the match. It seems incredible that the mere pulling of a trigger
by a Servian student and the slaughter of an archduke in the
Bosnian capital could in a month's time have plunged all Europe
into war. From small causes great events may rise. Certainly that
with which we are here dealing strikingly illustrates this homely
apothegm.

HOW THE WAR BECAME CONTINENTAL

We cannot hope to point out the varied causes which were at work
in this vast event. Very possibly the leading ones are unknown to
us. Yet some of the important ones are evident and may be made
evident, and to these we must restrict ourselves.

Allusion has already been made to the general belief that the
Emperor of Germany was deeply concerned in it, and that Austria
would not have acted as it did without assurance of support, in
fact without direct instigation, from some strong allied Power,
and this Power is adjudged alike by public and private opinion to
have been Germany, acting in the person of its ambitious war
lord, the dominating Kaiser.