physical and financial. The leaders were for it. It was policy. A
boiling pot will boil, a nurtured seed will grow. There was no
escape from the avowed goal. A slow drift to the inevitable, a
thunderbolt forged, the awful push toward the vortex! What men
and nations want they get."

GERMANY'S STAKE IN THE WAR

What had Germany to gain in the war in the instigation of which
she is charged with being so deeply involved? Territorial
aggrandizement may have been one of her purposes. Belgium and
Holland lay between her and the open Atlantic, and the possession
of these countries, with their splendid ports, would pay her well
for a reasonable degree of risk and cost. The invasion of Belgium
as her first move in the war game may have had an ulterior
purpose in the acquisition of that country, one likely to be as
distasteful to France as the taking over of Alsace-Lorraine.
Perhaps the neutral position taken by Holland, with her seeming
inclination in favor of Germany, may have had more than racial
relations behind it. Considerations of ultimate safety from
annexation may have had its share in this attitude of neutrality.

The general impression has been that Germany went to war with the
purpose of establishing beyond question her political and
military supremacy on the European continent. Military despotism
in Germany was the decisive factor in making inevitable the
general war. The Emperor of Germany stood as the incarnation and
exponent of the Prussian policy of military autocracy. He had
ruled all German States in unwavering obedience to the militarist
maxim: "In times of peace prepare for war." He had used to the