Catholic Bavaria. Her main support--without which she could not have
challenged Europe--was that very power whose sole reason for being was
Catholicism: the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine which, from Vienna, controlled
and consolidated the Catholic against the Orthodox Slav: the House of
Hapsburg-Lorraine was the champion of Catholic organization in Eastern
Europe.

The Catholic Irish largely stood apart.

Spain, not devout at all, but hating things not Catholic because those
things are foreign, was more than apart. Britain had long forgotten the
unity of Europe. France, a protagonist, was notoriously divided within
herself over the religious principle of that unity. No modern religious
analysis such as men draw up who think of religion as Opinion will
make anything of all this. Then why was there a fight? People who
talk of "Democracy" as the issue of the Great War may be neglected:
Democracy--one noble, ideal, but rare and perilous, form of human
government--was not at stake. No historian can talk thus. The essentially
aristocratic policy of England now turned to a plutocracy, the despotism
of Russia and Prussia, the immense complex of all other great modern
states gives such nonsense the lie.

People who talk of "A struggle for supremacy between the two Teutonic
champions Germany and England" are less respectable still. England is not
Teutonic, and was not protagonist. The English Cabinet decided by but
the smallest possible majority (a majority of one) to enter the war. The
Prussian Government never dreamt it would have to meet England at all.
There is no question of so single an issue. The world was at war. Why? No
man is an historian who cannot answer from the past. All who can answer
from the past, and are historians, see that it is the historical depth of