1914.
Jan, 4.
Lo attempt an adequate review of the war is obviously impossible for any except the few men who have been, throughout, behind the scenes at headquarters. Never since newspapers became general has censorship been 0 thorough, and to this day the world at large possesses but the vaguest details about engagements fought even in the earliest days the conflict. A few outetanding facts and dates are available, however, and these it may be useful. to summarize.
Future historians will probably date the origin of the quarrel from the dismissal of the Chancellor Bismarck in 1890. Bismarck had: fought three wars, those of 1864, 1866 and 1870, to create German national unity, and his principle in foreign policy was that of divide et impera. William TI, on becoming virtually his own Chancellor, inaugurated the famous weltpolitik, or as it might now be paraphrased, the pursuit-of Germany's place in the sun; the rapid effect of which was to draw together the Powers whom Bismarck had laboured to keep asunder. The Dual Alliance, the Anglo-French _agreement of 1904, the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907, developing into the Triple Entente, bore witness to the growing menace exercised in Europe by Germany's pugnacious ambitions. Three times that pugnacity might have led to war, in the disputes about Morocco of 1906 and 1911, and in connexion with the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina—a Pan-German attack on Pan-Slavism—in 1908. But neither France nor Russia was ready.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.