History will name this, of all wars, the Great War-as such, indeed, we know it now; but it is, nevertheless, the War of the Little Nations. The Great Powers are at grips-for the destinies of the Small. Broadly viewed, no doubt the issue is that of national license versus international law: the assertion of eternal Justice against organized brute force. In a special sense it is to settle, once for all, the question whether the mere fact of the proximity of a Great Power to a Small is to imply for the latter domination, absorption and final extinction, and for the world, a continually imperiled peace. If the future can hold for the small nation no guarantee of a separate existence Armageddon will have been fought in vain, and the day when wars shall cease will not have dawned.

It can hardly be gainsaid that the root-cause of the war is the attitude of the Germanic Powers towards the lesser nations of the Continent. The Prussian theory in this regard is of quite barbarian simplicity: the small nation was made to be absorbed by the great. For a Power in search of expansion the small, highly organized State has obvious advantages over the undeveloped colony; it is, so to speak, a colony ready-made. German attempts at colonization-in the true sense of the word -have not proved an unmixed success; in consequence, her attitude towards the little nations of Europe has in recent years undergone a change in more ways than one; and this change of attitude, as we shall see, profoundly affecting her relations with the entire civilized world, has altered the whole course of European, and so of human history.

For many years it has been the custom for German officials to represent the central position of their coun

try on the Continent as one of confinement and restraint-with more than a suggestion of hostile intent on the part of the surrounding States. I have myself heard German Consuls in various parts of the world utter, in this regard, a suspiciously unanimous complaint. This commonly took the form of an attack, more or less vehement, upon the late King Edward VII. The popular idea of that Monarch as a peace-maker was laughed to scorn; and his visits to the Continent were stigmatized as the outward and visible signs of a conspiracy to encircle the German Empire with "a ring of enemies." As with most German madness, here was method. It was the first stage in the preparation of the Teutonic mind for the present great adventure. Once persuade your perfervid Boche that the Fatherland stands in danger of assault from grasping and unscrupulous neighbors, and he will be the more ready to accept, without question, any sophisticated version of German foreign policy prepared for home consumption. A war resulting thereupon-no matter how it may appear to the outside world-will naturally present itself to him as one of pure defense against aggression-and ipso facto righteous. So, when the Day comes, you may hope to receive from him as the free gift of a patriotic soul-the necessary sacrifice. After this manner, no doubt, argued the ruling clique at Potsdam, and proceeded, with Prussian thoroughness, to put their theories into practice.

In this educative process the simple geographical fact of Great Britain's position athwart the approaches to the German coast was of supreme value. Now, the most zealous champion of the so-called "freedom of the seas" would be hard put to it to maintain that the British people have abused the com

manding position Nature has given them. Neither by taking toll of every German liner passing up Channel nor by means of large harbor dues, high tariffs, or a bounty-fed marine have we made our natural advantages oppressive to less happily situated Prus

sia.

Nevertheless, there lay the British breakwater-there, at the gates of the Fatherland, the British Fleet. To these it was sufficient to point, and leave the rest to insinuation's artful aid. So much for the popular, officially-propagated idea. The opposition it suggested was more apparent than real. There were other obstacles, less spectacular, which bulked at least as largely in the German official mind. Had the inculcators of international hate been at pains to complete their picture they would have added that the Central Empires were hedged, on the one hand and on the other, by a series of little States, which though prizing all too well a precarious independence, were fated to be as clay in the Imperial potter's hand. Is it not the bane of the Ballplatz that half a score of Slav and semiSlav communities encumber the seaward front of the Dual Monarchy? And are not the northern marches of the

Fatherland similarly beset? It was convenient, no doubt, to incite the German bourgeois against England, as the enemy-German officialdom owes a debt to General von Bernhardi, in particular, it can never wholly repay; but there always remained the possibility of a short-cut to power and the cherished "place in the sun" over the prostrate body of some small and insignificant State.

It was not a heroic policy, but it had certain advantages. The desired object could be gained-in part, if not in whole-at trifling cost, or even, perhaps, at no cost at all. The Wilhelmstrasse had not forgotten the ease with which it had achieved the dismemberment of Denmark in 1864, nor the

bloodless acquisition of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908, when the evil genius of the aged Emperor at Vienna stood beside him "in shining armor." To get something for nothing is the first instinct of the predatory mind; and, as a political principle, is not without its attractions even for a Prussian War Lord. At the same time the possibility of some strong Power espousing the cause of the weak had always to be reckoned with. Hence the appeal to the trident and the sword; the cult of the "mailed fist" and the relentless perfecting of the Teutonic war-machine.

Could we hazard a guess at the secrets of the All-Highest's heart we should find among them the fond hope that the absorption of first one and then another of the little States which barred the road to world-power might be effected bloodlessly. Such was indeed the true Kaiserian policy-that the rattling of the sabre, with the hint of irresistible force behind it, should, by staving off outside interference, achieve the immediate end without recourse to a conflict of arms. Thanks to the skilful application of these methods Germany had gained those vast areas in Africa which, for all their extent, were not deemed to constitute "a place in the sun." Thrice in the opening years of this century she has won substantial advantages at no greater cost than that of a European crisis. By their continued use the Imperialists of Potsdam looked to achieve the Germanizationpiecemeal, and without a world-war if possible, but with one if necessaryof all the little States, both on the north and on the south of the Germanic Empire.

Had there been no British Fleet invincible there can be no doubt as to the direction in which the imprisoned soul of Kultur would first have sought relief. As it was, the call of the East prevailed. And not without reason. Drang nach

Osten opened, to the Pan-German mind, a vista of splendid possibilities. The Turk was not only valuable as an ally, but as a testator. In the taking up of his estate no more serious opposition need be looked for than the passive resistance of a party-logged administration in Britain. Already Asia Minor was as good as German. Beyond lay the wide plains of Mesopotamia; Syria, Egypt-Persia, too, perhaps, and the rich gateway of the Indies; nay, all the vast spaces of the Middle East waited but the waving of the Hohenzollern wand to bloom again as a Greater Germany. With the direct land-route to the Orient in German hands, and a broad zone of Germanic territory athwart the Eurasian continent to serve as a permanent barrier between the hostile Powers on either side, the position of the Fatherland would have passed from one of confinement and restriction to one of enormous and farflung strength.

In pursuit, then, of that universal dominion hypocritically described by German publicists as "a place in the sun," the Teutonic plan was, in the first instance, to take the line of least resistance. It was more prudent, and the milieu favored. Out of the troubled waters of the Nearer East he would be a poor Chancellor who-without unduly stirring them-could fail to catch some fish. If the Dual Alliance Powers took up the Slav cause it would be to their own destruction. The neutrality of Belgium relegated to the limbo of polite fictions, that hapless State should form at once an avenue through which the invasion of Russia's western ally could be swiftly and remorselessly achieved, and a pied á terre for still more imposing schemes. By this, no doubt, the deluge-but upon its crest the Fatherland would ride to world-power, while among the floodwrack lay the débris of the British Empire.

Seeing that German expansion in either direction could only be realized at the expense of a minor State, the relations of Berlin with these innocent impediments in the path of Welt-politik speedily came to resemble those of the wolf and the lamb. Reluctantly-as the historian of the future will be moved to admit-Vienna followed suit. Close observers of international affairs since the formation of the present "balance of power" cannot but have noticed a certain cooling of the relations between the Central Empires-based, no doubt, on Austrian fears of German domination -and a growing cordiality between Austria and Britain, on the one hand, and between Austria and France, on the other. It was important for the Wilhelmstrasse to nip this untoward tendency in the bud. For in the German ascent to world-power the successive parts allotted to Austria-as to Turkey also are those of Ally, tool, and subject. So the hapless Monarchy was urged on to pursue a "forward policy" in the Balkan area. With Austria turned agent provocateur in the German interest, the breach between the Central Empires and the neighboring Great Powers grew steadily wider. Fired with the ambition of forestalling Russia at Constantinople, the Hapsburgs soon became as wolfish in their dealings with the Balkan peoples as any Hohenzollern could wish. The result of the first Balkan War and the sudden rise of the Balkan League created something like consternation in the Pan-German camp. As the world knows and will not easily forget, the second war-that of 1913-beginning with the treacherous attack of Bulgaria on her Allies of the previous year, was directly inspired from Berlin via Vienna. It failed, as it deserved to fail; but the plotting went on. An Austrian attack on Serbia, deliberately planned for the early part of 1914, was deferred for one reason only; Italy, as a