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 LXV The Age of Armament in Europe, and the Great War of 1914-18 THE progress in material science that created this vast steanaboat- and-railway republic of America and spread this precarious British steamship empire over the world, produced quite other effects upon the congested nations upon the continent of Europe. They found themselves confined within boundaries fixed during the horse-and-high-road period of human life, and their expansion over- seas had been very largely anticipated by Great Brita n. Only Russia had any freedom to expand eastward ; and she drove a great railway across Siberia until she entangled herself in a conflict with Japan, and pushed south-eastwardly towards the borders of Persia and India to the annoyance of Britain. The rest of the European powers were in a state of intensifying congestion. In order to realize the full possibilities of the new apparatus of human life they had to rearrange their affairs upon a broader basis, either by some sort of voluntary union or by a union imposed upon them by some pre- dominant power. The tendency of modern thought was in the direction of the former alternative, but all the force of political tradition drove Europe towards the latter. The downfall of the " empire " of Napoleon III, the establish- ment of the new German Empire, pointed men's hopes and fears towards the idea of a Europe consolidated under German auspices. For thirty-six years of uneasy peace the politics of Europe centred upon that possibility. France, the steadfast rival of Germany for European ascendancy since the division of the empire of Charle- magne, sought to correct her own weakness by a close aUiance with Russia, and Germany linked herself closely with the Austrian empire (it had ceased to be the Holy Roman Empire in the days of Napoleon I) and less successfully with the new kingdom of Italy. At first Great Britain stood as usual half in and half out of 388