A scrap of paper

“Just for a word--neutrality, a word which in war-time had so often been disregarded--just for a scrap of paper Great Britain was going to make war.” Such was the significant co...

Europe’s tremendous tragedy, the opening scenes of which are now unfolding themselves to horrified humanity, is no ordinary conflict arising out of a diplomatic quarrel which ti...

German diplomacy never contented itself with its one natural channel. All its lines were many tracked. The Ambassador’s reports were checked over his head by those of his secret...

But between a plan and its execution there is always a space, and sometimes an abyss. In this case the chief difficulty consisted in the ways and means, the choice lying between...

Prussian logic having thus triumphantly proved that the one prospective enemy must remain quiescent, drew the obvious conclusion that the other Powers of the Entente would not m...

Germany’s programme, then, from the beginning of the crisis resolves itself into two parts: to restrict the war in the sense that Austria’s enemy was to have no allies, and to e...

Why this differential treatment as between Germany and Italy? one may ask. Both being Austria’s allies, each might reasonably claim the same degree of confidence as the other. W...

Although the Austrian ultimatum to Servia was so worded and the time accorded for a reply so limited as to ensure its rejection, misgivings were, as we saw, felt and uttered in...

Austria-Hungary, sobered down by the tremendous consequences of her obstinacy, which now loomed large, displayed a conciliatory frame of mind. Her Ambassador in the Russian capi...

Over and over again I heard the chances of British neutrality and belligerency discussed by statesmen of the two military Empires, and the odds in favour of our holding strictly...

While the Kaiser and his advisers were thus adroitly pulling diplomatic and journalistic wires to secure coherence of time with place and auspicious conditions for dealing the p...

The frame of mind which generated this supreme unconcern for the feelings of the Belgians, this matter-of-fact contempt for the inviolability of a country’s plighted word, gives...