In other words, they had a stomach full of facts but no capacity to digest them.  They knew as much about Ulster and perhaps more than London as respects facts and detailed information, but they were in no position to pass judgment upon Ulster or the unity of the British Empire the moment there was an attack from the outside.  The Germans have dealt in materialistic facts.  But with the spirit that moulds and makes history they are all awry.  With the Germans, individuals are units and are counted from the outside, never from the inside.  That is why her diplomacy is not only a failure, but offensive:  it never differentiates among nations and peoples according to that which is within the mind and the heart of the people.

The German Emperor directed the Austrian ultimatum to Servia, insisting upon stronger demands than were at first proposed.  Then, turning his back upon the scene, he was able to protest that he was not responsible.  Yet the published correspondence from every capital in Europe now shows that the German Emperor fenced off every attempt to get Austria to modify or postpone or discuss her demands.  Germany was ready for everything except the interference of Great Britain.

A private telephone rang at five o’clock one morning in Berlin and an American lady was informed from a social quarter that “Something dreadful has happened.”  “Something awful—­something undreamed of.”  The American lady quickly asked, “Has the Kaiser been assassinated?” as the tone over the telephone indicated nothing less.

The response was, “England has declared war!”

That was the most unlooked-for step in all the German calculations.

Every spy report, every diplomatic agency, military and civil, had reported that England was out of the running:  Ireland in revolution, India in sedition, Canada, Australia, and South Africa just ready to break away from the British yoke.

The conception of the British empire as a federation of free peoples governing themselves, under a constitutional monarchy, is something incomprehensible in the German idea of government.  The German idea is of colonies attached to and paying tribute to the crown, something to be ruled over, governed, taxed, and made to serve.

Russia might go to war exposing in the field her weakness already spread out on paper by Russian authorities, with copies in Vienna and Berlin; but that England or Great Britain could or would fight at this time was an impossibility; although later England was to become “The vassal of Germany.”

And the wonderment of Germany has become the wonderment of the world.  “Roll up,” said Kitchener, and 2,000,000 men sprang to arms.  More than 800,000 of them are on the Continent; 1,700,000 of them are in training.

“Roll up,” said Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the British Exchequer; and $1,700,000,000 of war loan is rolling into the British Treasury, a sum one half the national debt of England and nearly twice the national debt of the United States.