like his methods; you may give
him a fair warning, but as long as your bargain exists you must stick to
it.

And our alliance with Austria is not a mere piece of political strategy,
not an unholy alliance like that of republican France with despotic
Russia or Anglo-Saxon England with Mongol Japan.

Our States have a common history. We are, as far as the Austrian Germans
are concerned--about a third of the population of Austria--the same
people. We have, and that is perhaps the most decisive point in the
alliance, nearly the same position on the surface of the globe.

We are both inland empires situated in the centre of Europe, surrounded
by many different nations, all of whom may bear some grudge against us.

As long as our joint frontiers are safe we can stand back to back and
face calmly any unnatural confederation like the present one.

We concluded the alliance with Austria because we wanted to safeguard
ourselves against foreign attack; it has turned out the alliance has
involved us in war. We might have avoided the war at present if we had
broken faith with our ally.

It would not have been difficult for us to find some legal quibbles,
like those which Italy, following a policy of very sober national
egotism, is now earnestly exclaiming to all the world.

If we had done so we should have been knaves, but we should have been
fools as well. For surely nobody can believe that the forces
antagonistic to Germany would have ceased to act if we had left Austria
in the lurch.

Neither France nor Russia nor England would have changed their policy.
They might, moreover, have tried to make Austria join in some future
conspiracy against us.

There are three main causes to which the war is due:

1. The French have never forgotten their defeat in 1870 and 1871. They
have always been thirsting for revenge.

2. We are at war because Russia thinks she has a mission on behalf of
the Slavic world; she feels that mission can only be fulfilled by
smashing Germany, the bulwark of Western idea.

3. We are at war because England has returned to her old political
ideals. She means to enforce anew the balance of power and she wants to
cut down Germany to that normal dead-level which alone, she thinks, is
consistent with her own security.

As far as our antagonism to France is concerned, we have always looked
upon it as a regrettable fact which time, perhaps, might do away with.
We are just enough to understand that a countr