They add
at the Foreign Office that the Government of Berlin had frankly explained
to the Cabinet of Paris the precise motives of its action.
Whether this is a complete account of the motives of the German Government
in introducing the law of 1913 cannot be definitely established. But the
motives suggested are adequate by themselves to account for the facts.
On the other hand, a part of the cost of the new law was to be defrayed
by a tax on capital. And those who believe that by this year Germany was
definitely waiting an occasion to make war have a right to dwell upon that
fact. I find, myself, nothing conclusive in these speculations. But what
is certain, and to my mind much more important, is the fact that military
preparations evoke counter-preparations, until at last the strain becomes
unbearable. By 1913 it was already terrific. The Germans knew well that
by January 1917 the French and Russian preparations would have reached
their culminating point. But those preparations were themselves almost
unendurable to the French.
I may recall here the passage already cited from a dispatch of Baron
Guillaume, Belgian Ambassador at Paris, written in June 1914 (p. 34).
He suspected, as we saw, that the hand of Russia had imposed the three
years' service upon France.
What Baron Guillaume thought plausible must not the Germans have thought
plausible? Must it not have confirmed their belief in the "inevitability"
of a war--that belief which, by itself, has been enough to produce war
after war, and, in particular, the war of 1870? Must there not have been
strengthened in their minds that particular current among the many that
were making for war? And must not similar suspicions have been active,
with similar results, on the side of France and Russia? The armaments
engender fear, the fear in turn engenders armaments, and in that vicious
circle turns the policy of Europe, till this or that Power precipitates the
conflict, much as a man hanging in terror over the edge of a cliff ends by
losing his nerve and throwing himself over.
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