e's
wealth, its hatred of France's attractions for all the world. Everyone
who came in contact with the Germans felt the bullet-headed
belligerence of their attitude which they were never at any pains to
conceal.

The military men of France knew that Germany had for years been
preparing for aggression on a large scale. They knew that she would
strike when she felt that she was readiest and her opponents of the
Triple Entente were least ready.

The state of mind of the civilians--busy, prosperous, peace-loving,
concerned with conversational warfare about a multitude of petty
internal affairs--is difficult to describe. But I think it may not be
impertinent to say of it that it was something like the state of mind
of a congregation, well fed, comfortable, conscious of many pleasant
virtues and few corroding sins, before whom a preacher holds up the
last judgment. None of them hopes to escape it, none of them can tell
at what moment he may be called to his account, none of them would wish
to go in just his present state, and yet none of them does anything
when he leaves church to put himself more definitely in readiness for
that great decision which is to determine where he shall spend eternity.

In 1911 it seemed for a brief while that the irruption from the east
was at hand. But Germany did not feel quite ready; she "dickered"; and
things went on seemingly as before.

France seemed to forget. But she was not so completely abandoned to
hopefulness as was England--England, who turned her deafest ear to Lord
Roberts' impassioned pleas for preparedness.

France has an institution called the Superior War Council. It is the
supreme organ of military authority and the center of national defense;
it consists of eleven members supposed to be the ablest commanding
generals in the nation. The president of this council is the Minister
of War; the vice president is known as the generalissimo of the French
army.

In 1910 General Joseph Joffre became a member of the Superior War
Council, and in 1911 he became generalissimo.

It was because the Council felt the imminence of war with Germany that
General Pau--to whom the vice presidency should have gone by right of
his priority and also of his eminent fitness--patriotically waived the
honor, because in two years he would be sixty-five and would have to
retire; he felt that the defense of the country needed a younger man
who could remain more years in service. So Joffre w