have been the rout in 1912-13 of the Turks, on whom Germany had staked
her credit in return for control of the Berlin-Baghdad route; for the
free Balkan confederation, which loomed on the horizon, would bar for
ever German expansion towards the East. The Balkan States themselves
provided the German opportunity; the Treaty of Bukarest in 1913
entrenched discord in their hearts and reopened a path for German
ambition and intrigue. Austria, not without the usual instigation,
proposed to Italy a joint attack upon Serbia; the offer was not
accepted, but by the winter of 1913-14 the Kaiser had gone over to the
party which had resolved upon war and was seeking an occasion to
palliate the cause.

The immeasurable distance between the cause and the occasion was shown
by the fact that Belgium was the first to suffer in an Austro-Serbian
dispute; and the universal character of the issue was foreshadowed by
the breach of its neutrality. Germany would not have planned for two
years past an offensive through that inoffensive, unconcerned, and
distant country, had the cause of the war been a murder at Serajevo.
The cause was a comprehensive determination on the German part to
settle international issues by the sword, and it involved the
destinies of civilization. The blow was aimed directly or indirectly
at the whole world, and Germany's only prospect of success lay in the
chance that most of the world would fail to perceive its implications
or delay too long its effective intervention. It was the defect of her
self-idolatry and concentration that she could not develop an
international mind or fathom the mentality of other peoples. She could
not conceive how England would act on a "scrap of paper," and never
dreamt of American participation. But she saw that Russia and France
would inevitably and immediately be involved in war by the attempt at
armed dictation in the Balkans, and that the issue would decide the