[Footnote 562:  British White Paper, Nos. 114, 122, 123, 125; Belgian Grey Book, No. 19.]

By these falsehoods, dinned into a singularly well-drilled and docile people, the Germans were worked up to a state of frenzy for an enterprise for which their rulers had been preparing during more than a decade.  The colossal stores of war material, amassed especially in 1913-14 (some of them certain soon to deteriorate), the exquisitely careful preparations at all points of the national life, including the colonies, refute the fiction that war was forced upon Germany.  The course of the negotiations preceding the war, the assiduous efforts of Germany to foment Labour troubles in Russia before the crisis, the unpreparedness of the Allies for the fierce and sustained energy of the Teutonic assault,—­all these symptoms prove the guilt of Germany[563].  The crowning proof is that up to the present (August 1915) she has not issued a complete set of diplomatic documents, and not one despatch which bears out the Chancellor’s statement that he used his influence at Vienna for peace.  The twenty-nine despatches published in her White Book are a mere fragment of her immense diplomatic correspondence which she has found it desirable to keep secret, and, as we have seen, her officials suppressed the Tsar’s second telegram of July 29 urging that the Austro-Serb dispute be referred to the Hague Tribunal.

[Footnote 563:  See the damning indictment by a German in J’accuse, Section III., also the thorough and judicial examination by J.W.  Headlam, The History of Twelve Days.]

The sets of despatches published by the Allies show conclusively that each of them worked for peace and was surprised by the war.  Their unpreparedness and the absolute preparedness of Germany have appeared so clearly during the course of hostilities as to give the lie to the German pamphleteers who have striven to prove that in the last resort the war was “a preventive war,” that is, designed to avert a future conflict at a time unfavourable to Germany.  There is not a sign that any one of the Powers of the Entente was making more than strictly defensive preparations; and, as has been shown, the Entente themselves were formed in order to give mutual protection in case of aggression from her.  The desperate nature of that aggression appeared in her unscrupulous but successful efforts to force Turkey into war (Oct.-Nov. 1914).  No crime against Christendom has equalled that whereby the champions of Kultur sought to stir up the fanatical passions of the Moslem World against Europe.  Fortunately, that design has failed; and incidentally it added to the motives which have led Italy to break loose from the Central Powers and assist the Allies in assuring the future of the oppressed nationalities of Europe.

[Illustration:  THE PARTITION OF AFRICA IN 1902.]

INDEX.