her supremacy in Germany by the war against Austria, by that great policy described by Bismarck in the famous phrase that it was by blood and iron that their unity was to be secured—Germany, so united by the same policy of blood and iron, secured predominance on the Continent when she crushed France in the war of 1870; that Germany, now in this new century, before the actual outbreak of this war, has three times brought Europe to the brink of war and has now thrust Europe over the brink into war.
But then, the aggressor has all the advantages. He makes his plans beforehand, he knows his purpose, he chooses his time. Read the White Paper published by our Government; read the conversation held between the German Ambassador at Vienna and our representative there, when he said to him: "France is not ready for war, Russia is not so unwise as to take part in a war which would raise awkward questions for her in Poland and elsewhere. We know very well what we are doing when we back Austria." Believe me, gentlemen, you do not realize what the task is that lies before you, you do not know the dangers that you have confronted in the past, you are not in a position to see what are the conditions which can alone guarantee you in the future, unless you recognize that, for a generation and more, Germany has been preparing for this struggle, has deliberately set herself to bring this struggle about in Germany's own time, so that, having secured a predominance on the Continent, she might henceforth exercise the hegemony of the world. I sometimes see it stated that we are not fighting against Germany, that we are fighting against a Prussian military caste, and a spirit of militarism. That is partly true, but it is not the whole truth. For Prussia has Prussianized Germany, and you do not begin to understand this question unless you realize that you are fighting Germany, that Germany is as united as we are and will fight as hard and all the harder, when she is pushed back into her own land, and there begins to see and suffer some—necessarily to suffer some part, though I hope not all—of the misery she has inflicted in Belgium, in France, and in Poland. Whichever way you turn, in our own White Book, in the French Yellow Book, in the revelations the other day of Signor Giolitti in the Italian Parliament, you see that this struggle is not an accident. It is not a sudden outburst in a moment when the rulers of Germany lost their heads. It is the deliberate culmination of a policy
