Navy on the 1st of August. War was
declared at Berlin on the 1st of August, and the same or next day the
German forces entered Luxemburg. On August 4th they entered Belgium, and
war was declared by England against Germany.

* * * * *

Looking back at the history of the whole affair, one seems to see, as I
have said, a kind of fatality about it. The great power and vigour of
the German peoples, shown by their early history in Europe, had been
broken up by the religious and other dissensions of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. It fell to Prussia to become the centre of
organization for a new Germany. The rich human and social material of
the German States--their literary, artistic, and scientific culture,
their philosophy, their learning--clustered curiously enough round the
hard and military nucleus of the North. It was perhaps their instinct
and, for the time, their salvation to do so. The new Germany, hemmed in
on all sides by foreign Powers, could only see her way to reasonable
expansion and recognition, and a field for her latent activities, by the
use of force, military force. A long succession of political
philosophers drilled this into her. She embarked in small wars and
always with success. She became a political unity and a Great Power in
Europe. And then came her commercial triumph. Riches beyond all
expectation flowed in; and a mercantile class arose in her midst whose
ideals of life were of a corresponding character--the ideals of the
wealthy shopkeeper. What wonder that, feeling her power, feeling herself
more than ever baulked of her rights, she cast her eyes abroad, and
coveted the imperial and commercial supremacy of the world?

In this she had the example of Britain before her. Britain had laid land
to land and market to market over the globe, and showed no particular
scruple in the matter. Why should not Germany do the same? It was true
that Britain always carried the Bible with her--but this was mere
British cant. Britain carried the Bible in her left hand, but in her
right a sword; and when she used the latter she always let the former
drop. Germany could do likewise--but without that odious pretence of
morality, and those crocodile tears over the unfortunates whom she
devoured. It was only a question of Might and Organization and Armament.

So far Germany seems to have had a perfectly good case; and though we in
England might not like her ambitions, we could