ase in German
population and in trade and wealth brought with it an increase in
the German navy, until Germany, with her ally, Austria, became the
threatening continental factor to British security.

Now Britain formed a combination for defense with Russia and France.
Her military part was to send 120,000 troops across the Channel to
cooperate with the French army against the Germans. She was the only
one of the great nations, except the United States, that depended
upon a regular army, which was occupied mostly in policing her
empire. Aside from her regulars, her only military organization were
her Territorials, which were something on the same order as the
American National Guard.

The number of men which she could throw across the Channel was
therefore insignificant, compared to the great hordes of the
European armies. Her real part was command of the sea. She was
either to destroy the German navy or make it helpless in interfering
with allied trade on the seas. Her Government was Liberal, her
people as a whole skeptical of the possibility of a European war.
For centuries they had been bred to believe that her security was in
her fleet. She had long enjoyed her empire, she possessed immense
capital, and her inclination was toward complacency, while Germany's
was that of the eager newcomer to power.

The situation in Ireland on account of the passage of the Home Rule
Bill had become so strained that many people believed civil war to
be inevitable. The conviction of the German Ambassador in London, as
well as most German observers, was that Britain would not actually
enter the war, when the test came. Upon her decision, it is now
evident, depended the fate of Europe. With England out, the French
army could not have saved France. For then, Germany could have had
the freedom of the seas. Her navy would have sent the French into
harbor, closing not only every French, but every Russian port to the
entrance of supplies and munitions, which would have meant food
scarcity in France, and utter scarcity of munitions in Russia.

German troops could have landed in France to the rear of the French
army. The whole complexion of the war would have been changed. So
well laid were their plans, so sure were they of their numbers of
men and guns, which they could promptly concentrate, that there
seems little question of the ability of the Central Powers to have
crushed France in the first three months of the war, and then to
have