Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/22

 CHAPTER II THE ISOLATION OF GERMANY

has been objected that the last days before the outbreak of war should not alone be considered in deciding the question as to where the guilt lies. We must, it is said, go further back, in order to discover how the contending elements were formed. In doing this, we shall find that imperialism, and the movement for extension of territory, characterized all the Great Powers, and not Germany alone.

Very true; but this movement of extension does not wholly explain the world-war, the peculiarity of which is that all the Great Powers and several of the smaller ones took part in it, and that all the world united itself against Germany. To show how this came about is the problem we have to deal with. The mere word “imperialism” does not take us any further.

The uprise of imperialism at the close of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century is marked by the fact that, far and wide, the Great Powers began to come into conflict with each other. First we had France with Italy, and then with England; America with Spain, and also with England; England with the Boers, with whom all the world sympathized; and, finally, Russia with Japan, behind whom England stood.

During that period Germany was the least affected Rh