Their eyes finally turned to the great East. There in China and India and the neighboring countries were three hundred millions of men whose trade would be a worthy prize for even Germany's ambition. Then began the development of what is sometimes called Germany's Mittel-Europa dream. Her scholars encouraged it; her travelers brought reports which stimulated the interest, and soon she began practically to carry it into effect. It meant the building of a great railroad down to the Persian Gulf; a railroad to be controlled by nations where her influence would be all-powerful. She needed Austria, she needed Serbia, she needed Bulgaria and Turkey.

[Illustration: Map: Most of Asia, Africa and Australia, showing
Germany's hoped for rail and ship routes from the North Sea to Australia,
South Africa and China.]
HOW THE PAN-GERMANS PLANNED TO EXTEND THEIR "MITTEL-EUROPA" DREAM

At first the project was carried out peacefully. Friendly relations were stimulated with Turkey and the other necessary powers; permits were obtained to build the railroad. But Germany was not the only power that had dreamed this dream. Alexander the Great had done it. Napoleon had done it, and England had carried it out. From the days of Queen Elizabeth the English control of India was one of its greatest assets.

Through most of the nineteenth century the English power in the East was threatened, not by Germany, but by Russia. It was because of this threat that England had always protected Turkey. Turkey and Constantinople were her barrier against Russia. The literature of England in the last days of the nineteenth century shows clearly her fear of Russian intrigues in India. Kipling's Indian stories are full of it. But now that fear had passed. It was no longer the imaginary danger which might come from the great Slavic Empire, but a trade weapon in the grasp of the most efficient military power ever developed that was threatening. Against this threat England had been doing her best. Here and there near the Persian Gulf she had been extending her influence. Here and there, as German Consuls obtained concessions, they would find them later withdrawn, because England had stepped in. Yet just before the war England, anxious for peace, had come to an agreement with Germany practically admitting the German plans to be carried out as far as Bagdad.

It looked as though it were only a question of time, but when the Balkan wars established Serbia as the greatest of the Balkan powers, and gave Russia a preponderating influence among the Balkan nations, and when it began to look as if some great Balkan state might be established which should be friendly to Russia and consequently a hindrance to the German scheme, then it was that it was necessary that war should come. The Germans had been wonderfully successful. For a time they controlled Austria, Bulgaria, Serbia and Turkey, but with Bulgaria's fall the end had come. They were compelled to awake from their Mittel-Europa dream.

[Illustration: Photograph] Copyright Press Illustrating Service BULGARIANS CELEBRATE PEACE The first peace picture. The Bulgarian army is holding a solemn thanksgiving mass on the battlefield just after the signing of the armistice which ended their participation in the war.

[Illustration: Photograph] Copyright Underwood and Underwood, N. Y. French Official Photograph AMERICAN COLORED SOLDIERS IN ALSACE Inspection of arms before going into action. Colored troops were in battles with the Germans many times and succeeded in beating the enemy in every instance.

CHAPTER XLVII

THE CENTRAL EMPIRES WHINE FOR PEACE

The Allied victories in France during the months of August and September of 1918, led to a new peace offensive among the Central Powers. It was very plain to the German High Command, as well as to the Allied leaders, that Germany's great ambitions had now been definitely thwarted. It seems clear that, in spite of the hopeful and encouraging words which they addressed to their own armies, the expert soldiers, who were controlling the destinies of Germany, understood well the conditions they were facing. Putting aside all sentiment, therefore, they deliberately set out to obtain a peace which would leave them an opportunity to gain by diplomacy what they were sure that they were about to lose on the field of battle. They had made pleas for peace before, but their pleas had been rejected.