Gentlemen, many of the great wars of
history have been almost accidentally brought about by the blindness of
blundering statesmen, or by some wave of popular passion. That is not so
today. ["Hear, hear!"] There was nothing in a quarrel such as this
between Austria and Servia that could not have been and that would not
have been settled by pacific means. [Cheers.]
Germany's Profound Mistakes.
But in the judgment of those who guide and control German policy the
hour had come to strike the blow that had been long and deliberately
prepared. In their hands lay the choice between peace and war, and their
election was for war. In so deciding, as everybody now knows, Germany
made two profound miscalculations. [Cheers.] Both of them natural enough
in a man who had come to believe that in international matters
everything can be explained and measured in terms of material force.
What, gentlemen, were those mistakes? The first was that Belgium,
[cheers,] a small and prosperous country entirely disinterested in
European quarrels, guaranteed by the joint and several compacts of the
great powers, that Belgium would not resent, and certainly would not
resist, the use of her territory as a highroad for an invading German
force into France.
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