Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/162

 and an eye on Germany's developed wealth. On her seacoast lay the strong British Navy. “What is Germany?” asked question 1 in the public school catechism on geography, “It is your Fatherland, entirely surrounded by enemies.” Militarism was hammered into the German people in the form of defence, defence, always defence. And let me repeat; in the beginning the men who urged this were not all insincere.

Germany went into the game of financial imperialism with the rest. The world was spotted with “spheres of influence,” where German capital harvested fields of trade or raw materials for the factories of Berlin, Leipsic, Düsseldorf. These interests must be protected; other capital must be kept out. The German army began to pass from a defensive force to an implied offensive force. In such crises as the transfer of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Germans won because the Kaiser rattled his sword and the others yielded for fear he might turn loose his perfect army.

There came, too, a mental change. “He who forges the sword will want to wield it.” Here is one of the ways in which a national mind works like an individual mind. You have found, we will say, that you play an extraordinary game of lawn tennis. You will not long be satisfied with scrub games. You will want, if you are a normal man, to enter tournaments, to prove your accomplishment and superiority before the world. You discover that you