Counter-Currents
minds with sentiment which had no truth to rest on? We knew that the taxes of Europe were spent on armaments, and we talked about International Arbitration. We knew that science was devotedly creating ruthless instruments of destruction, and we turned our pleased attention to the beautiful ceremonies with which the Peace Palace at The Hague was dedicated. We knew, or we might have known, that the strategic railway built by Germany to carry troops to the Belgian frontier was begun in 1904, and that the memorandum of General Schlieffen was sanctioned by the Emperor (there was no pretence of secrecy) in 1909. Yet we thought—in common with the rest of the world—that a "scrap of paper" and a plighted word would constitute protection. We knew that Germany's answer to England's proposals for a mutual reduction of navies was an increase of estimates, and a double number of dreadnoughts.
68
