Their surplus profits the munition makers invested sometimes in
newspapers. It was proved in the German Reichstag in 1913 that the
great gun-makers of Prussia had a force of hired newspaper writers to
keep up threats of war. They paid certain papers in Paris to print
articles to make the French people think that the Germans were about
to attack them. These same gun-makers in Berlin tried to persuade the
German people that the French were on the point of attacking them.

All of this played into the hands of the Junkers by making people all
over Europe feel that war could not be avoided. Thus when the Junkers
were ready to strike and the great war broke out, people would say,
"At last it has come, the war that we knew was inevitable."

Questions for Review

1. Why did Germany decline to take a "naval holiday"?
2. What is meant by "strategic railroads"?
3. Why were the military leaders alarmed at the growth of the
Socialist Party?
4. What was the fate of popular government in Russia?
5. How did the Junkers owe their power to the feudal system?
6. How were the German merchants won over to war?
7. What part had the gun-makers in bringing on war?

CHAPTER XVII

The Spark that Exploded the Magazine

The year 1914.--England's troubles.--Plots for a "Greater
Serbia."--The hated archduke.--The shot whose echoes shook the whole
world.--Austria's extreme demands.--Russia threatens.--Frantic
attempts to prevent war.--Mobilizing on both sides.--Germany's
tiger-like spring.--The forts of the Vosges Mountains.--The other path
to Paris.--The neutrality of Belgium.--Belgium defends herself.

The year 1914 found England involved in serious difficulties. Her
parliament had voted to give home rule to Ireland. There was to be an
Irish parliament, which would govern Ireland as the Irish wanted it
governed. Ulster, a province in the northeast of Ireland, however, was
very unhappy over this arrangement. Its people were largely of English
and Scotch descent, and they were Protestants, while the other
inhabitants of Ireland were Celts and Catholics. The people of this
province were so bitter against home rule that they actually imported
rifles and drilled regiments, saying that they would start a civil war
if England compelled them to be governed by an Irish parliament.

There were labor troubles and strikes, also, in England, and
threatened revolutions in India, where the English government was none
too popular.