full his autocratic power in building up the German Empire and in
making it not only a marvel of industrial efficiency, but also a
stupendous military machine. In this effort he had burdened the
people of Germany with an ever-increasing war budget. The limit
in this direction was reached with the war budget of the year
1912 when the revenues of the princes and of all citizens of
wealth were specially taxed. No new sources of revenue remained.
A crisis had come.

That crisis, as sometimes claimed, was not any menace from
Britain or any fear of the British power. It was rather the very
real and very rapidly rising menace of the new great Slav power
on Germany's border, including, as it did, the Russian Empire and
the entire line of Slav countries that encircled Germanic Austria
from the Adriatic to Bohemia. These Slav peoples are separated
from the governing Teutonic race in the Austrian Empire by the
gulfs of blood, language, and religion. And in Europe the Slav
population very largely outnumbers the Teuton population and is
growing much more rapidly.

Recent events, especially in the Balkan wars, had made it plain,
not to the German Emperor alone, but to all the world, that the
growth into an organized power of more than two hundred millions
of Slav peoples along nearly three thousand miles of
international frontier was a menace to the preservation of Teuton
supremacy in Europe. That Teuton supremacy was based on the
sword. The German Emperor's appeal was to "My sword." But when
the new sword of the united Slav power was allowed to be
unsheathed, German supremacy was threatened on its own ground and
by the weapon of its own choosing.