propagated in the early days of Aug., were meant for Italian as much as for British consumption. Italy had, however, under wise guidance, refused to believe in French aggressiveness, and had declared her neutrality on Aug. i on the ground that her intervention was not required by the terms of the Triple Alliance. Her abstention on this occasion was probably the greatest service she rendered to the Entente during the war, for it released from the Franco-Italian frontier some hundreds of thousands of troops without whose assistance the battle of the Marne could hardly have been won. Her example may also have been the last straw in the balance which determined Ruma- nia, despite its Hohenzollern King and its Austrian alliance, to stand aloof from the struggle.
The Neutral States. Neutrality was expected from the other European States, whatever their sympathies might be. Holland's traditions were more friendly to Germany than to Belgium, but they were obliterated by the wanton invasion of Belgium's neutrality, and Bethmann Hollweg's argument that a German annexation of Belgium would be useless without the acquisition of Dutch territory was not calculated to assuage alarm. But more immediate perils dictated Dutch neutrality. There was no reason to suppose that Entente forces, which protected only a tiny corner of Belgium, could have saved a single acre of Dutch territory. Holland, with its wealth of capital and agricultural produce and its harbours, would have fallen an easy prey to Germany, while the remnants of its colonial empire might have gone the way the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon had gone during the last occupation of Holland by an enemy of Great Britain. Holland was wise in its neutrality, and even the Entente probably benefited more by it than it would have done by Dutch inter- vention. It was certainly well for Great Britain that in 1917-8 German submarines had no Dutch ports for bases which could not be blocked as the exits from Bruges were in April 1918.
Denmark was in the like case, albeit with an ancient grievance against Germany in the wrongful detention of Danish Slesvig. But again, Denmark could not have been defended against German invasion, and Danish coasts and ports would have been invaluable to German submarines. Denmark, too, was wise to eschew belligerency and seek to develop its influence in con- junction with its Scandinavian colleagues. Of these, Norway sympathized with the Entente, and might, but for the fear of Sweden, have been driven by German piracy into war. Sweden's affections were more divided. The Labour party, led by Brant- ing, was, if not pro-Entente, at least averse from intervention on Germany's side. But the upper and bourgeois classes were strongly German in sympathy and inclined to activism in that direction. This affection was partly due to cultural development, but more to a greater fear of Russia which had been aggravated by the fate of Finland and Russian designs in the Aland Islands. The Baltic was, like the Adriatic, the scene of a triangular duel; but the Russian menace in the Baltic was greater than the Teu- tonic menace in the Adriatic. Sweden's fears of Russia counter- balanced Danish and Norwegian grievances against Germany, and the Scandinavian States found a basis for neutrality in an equilibrium of antipathies.
Spanish neutrality was the resultant of similarly antagonistic domestic feelings. The King, with his English wife, was pro- Entente, but the Catholic and conservative upper classes were pro-German, while the democratic factions, hankering after revolution, took the opposite side. Portugal was, as it had been since its war of liberation and the marriage of Catherine of Braganza, an ally if not a pawn of England; and the prospective agreements which England and Germany had just made for the division of its colonies had not sufficed to transfer its alle- giance from the one to the other beneficiary. No one expected Switzerland to abandon its neutrality; and the Balkans were left as the principal sphere of diplomatic competition. .Greece had a Prussian Queen and a King who was a Prussian field- marshal, but a prime minister whose sympathies and confidence were whole-heartedly on the Entente side. Bulgaria, as a result of the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913, had no sympathies at all, but a comprehensive grievance against all her neighbours who
had robbed her of the fruits of victory over Turkey, and against the Great Powers which had acquiesced in that spoliation. Her object was simply to discover the probable winner, and back it with all her resources in the hope of getting back all she could from the losers. For the moment she would wait and see.
Turkey was nearer to a decision. She had long been wooed by the Kaiser. In 1898 he had declared himself the friend of all Mahommedans, whose-soever subjects they might be; and the circumstance that, outside Turkey, they were mostly the sub- jects of Great Britain, Russia, or France gave point to his policy. The Turkish revolution of 1908 and the machinations of a so-called party of progress, led by Enver and Tal'at, made no difference to the growth of Turco-Teutonic affection. England had afforded but a half-hearted support against the Russian advance toward Constantinople; she had assisted in the liberation of Greece and the Balkans, and had helped her- self to Cyprus and Egypt and other fragments of the dismem- bered Turkish Empire; and her friendship seemed but the nether millstone to the upper millstone of Russian aggression. More- over, by August 1914 the antagonism between England and Rus- sia, on which 'Abdul Hamid relied, had disappeared in an alli- ance in which, so far as the Near East was concerned, Rus- sia would be the predominant partner; and the interpretation which Russia put on that entente was illustrated by a crown council held in St. Petersburg on Feb. 6 1914 to discuss the means for securing the Straits and Constantinople. The appoint- ment of the German Gen. Liman von Sanders to reorganize Turkish forces was the retort which naturally commended itself both to the Turk and the Teuton.
The Turkish mind was, however, slow to move; it was no light matter to reverse the traditional policy of centuries and embark on war with a Power which had long regarded the maintenance of the Turkish Empire as one of the first of British interests. The Kaiser believed that he had Turkey in his pocket, but no one knew what her attitude would be. When the German admiral made for the Dardanelles with the " Goeben " and the " Breslau " on Aug. 8-9 his course was dictated by necessity and not by plan, and he was even prepared to force his way up the Straits if peaceful admission were refused. As late as the 5th the German embassy at Constantinople had reported that it was undesirable for him to arrive there yet. He was, however, received with open arms. Turkish opinion had been profoundly irritated by the commandeering of two Turkish dreadnoughts which had been built in British dockyards out of the proceeds of a patriotic Turkish loan; officers of the British Naval Mission in Turkey were superseded, and, in spite of the Grand Vizier's opposition, Enver, the Minister of War, was mobilizing Turkish forces for an attack on the Suez Canal. Plans for Anglo-French naval co- operation in the Mediterranean had to be abandoned and British ships detached to blockade the Dardanelles and safeguard the Red Sea, while troops were hurried from India to Egypt. Twice before the end of Aug. Sir Louis Mallet, H.M.'s ambassador at Constantinople, mooted the possibility of forcing the Dardanelles, but expressed the opinion that success was doubtful without military cooperation and that failure would be disastrous. He succeeded, however, in prolonging the resistance of the Grand Vizier to Enver's designs and in delaying the breach until toward the end of Oct.
Turkey's Entry. By that time the German Government had determined to cut the Gordian knot of Turkish indecision. The western campaign was coming to a deadlock before Ypres, the first German attack on Warsaw had failed, and a great Austrian effort was being planned to punish Serbia for her success in resisting attacks in the Balkans. On Oct. 28 Souchon sallied out of the Bosporus into the Black Sea with the combined Ger- man and Turkish squadrons, and on the 29-301!! he mined Sevastopol harbour, sank a transport, and bombarded Odessa, Theodosia, and Novorossisk. Souchon alleged that the transport was a minelayer laying mines in Turkish territorial waters; and while the rival parties were still discussing the rival versions, Russia, having in Sept. secured a neutrality engagement from Rumania which was not communicated to her allies, declared
