The war was begun by the military masters of Germany, who proved to
be also the masters of Austria-Hungary. These men have never regarded
nations as peoples, men, women and children of like blood and frame
as themselves, for whom governments existed and in whom governments
had their life. They have regarded them merely as serviceable
organizations which they could by force or intrigue bend or corrupt
to their own purpose. They have regarded the smaller states, in
particular, and the peoples who could be overwhelmed by force, as
their natural tools and instruments of domination. Their purpose has
long been avowed. The statesmen of other nations, to whom that
purpose was incredible, paid little attention; regarded what German
professors expounded in their class-rooms and German writers set
forth to the world as the goal of German policy as rather the dream
of minds detached from practical affairs, as preposterous private
conceptions of German destiny, than as the actual plans of
responsible rulers; but the rulers of Germany themselves knew all the
while what concrete plans, what well-advanced intrigues, lay back of
what the professors and the writers were saying, and were glad to go
forward unmolested, filling the thrones of Balkan states with German
princes, putting German officers at the service of Turkey to drill
her armies and make interest with her Government, developing plans of
sedition and rebellion in India and Egypt, setting their fires in
Persia. The demands made by Austria upon Serbia were a mere single
step in a plan which compassed Europe and Asia, from Berlin to
Bagdad. They hoped those demands might not arouse Europe, but they
meant to press them whether they did or not, for they thought
themselves ready for the final issue of arms.