from the
use of words in a meaning which at home they do not connote at all.
Take, for example, the whole question of militarism. As we see it, it is
a matter altogether of degree. For defense against what the German
considers the most terrible danger that he personally has to confront,
it has been necessary from time to time to change both the size and the
composition of his forces, whether offensive or defensive, and they
therefore have introduced compulsory military service, an idea which has
always been very offensive to Anglo-Saxons, but which in cases of dire
necessity they have been compelled to utilize themselves, as, for
example, during our own civil war, the abandonment of voluntary
enlistment and the introduction of the draft.

Now, the compulsory military service of the German means that every man
is for a period of his life drafted and trained as a soldier. Forty
years ago there were a great many men who escaped by reason of one or
another provision of the law. That number was steadily diminished until
within eighteen months, when finally it was proclaimed that every German
who could endure the severity of that training must undergo it, and that
was due to the fact that the military balance of power of which I spoke
had been so completely changed by the re-armament of Russia and by the
formation of the South Slav armies in the Balkan Peninsula.

As a parallel we might imagine, not one troublesome neighbor, but four.
We might imagine a tremendous military power developed in Canada, and we
might imagine a hostile military power on the Atlantic side and another
one on the Pacific side, in which case we would beyond a question have
to expand our inchoate militarism, just in proportion as we came to feel
the necessity for a strong physical defensive or offensive in the way of
a great standing army, and we probably would do it without any
hesitation.

Now, Germany has not any really bitter foe on the north, although there
is no love lost between the Germans and the Scandinavians; but it has an
embittered foe on the east, and another one on the west, and what has
proved to be an embittered foe upon the water and a very lukewarm
neutral State on the south, a State which had joined in alliance with
her.

Italy had joined what Italy considered a defensive alliance, but not an
offensive alliance, and chose to regard the outbreak of this war as an
offensive movement on the part of Germany, and for that reason has