Naturally, the outbreak of war disturbs trade very much, especially trade with foreign countries. A great deal of the German commerce, carried on with Great Britain, the United States, South America, and far distant colonies, had to travel over the ocean. German merchants would never support a war cheerfully if they thought that their trade would be interrupted for any length of time. So the Junkers, when they made up their minds to wage war for the conquest of France and Russia, persuaded the merchants that after these countries had been conquered they would be forced to give a big sum of money to Germany which would more than pay her back for the full cost of the war. Then the Russians would be compelled, as a result of the war, to promise to trade only with German merchants and manufacturers, and thus everybody in Germany would be much richer.[[6]]

[6] When England came in, the merchants of Germany were very down-hearted, for they saw all their over-seas trade cut off at a blow. But the Junkers called together the leading merchants and bribed them with promises. In the year 1918 one of the prominent manufacturers of Germany made a statement which got out and was published in the countries of the Entente. After telling how the blame for the war was to be laid at the door of the land-owning, military class, he confessed that he personally had been bribed to support the war by the promise of thirty thousand acres of Australian land, which was to be given to him after Germany had conquered the world. This, of course, was pure piracy; the motto of Prussia for some time had been that piracy pays.

There was one class of manufacturers who did not lose trade, but gained it through a war. This was composed of the makers of guns and munitions. They were clamorously back of the Junkers in their demands for war. These people profited by preparation for war. They kept inventing newer and stronger guns so that the weapons which they had sold the governments one year would be out-of-date the next, ready to be thrown on the scrap heap. In this way, the factories were kept working over-time and their profits were enormous. This money, of course, came out of the taxes of the common people.

Their surplus profits the munition makers invested sometimes in newspapers. It was proved in the German Reichstag in 1913 that the great gun-makers of Prussia had a force of hired newspaper writers to keep up threats of war. They paid certain papers in Paris to print articles to make the French people think that the Germans were about to attack them. These same gun-makers in Berlin tried to persuade the German people that the French were on the point of attacking them.

All of this played into the hands of the Junkers by making people all over Europe feel that war could not be avoided. Thus when the Junkers were ready to strike and the great war broke out, people would say, “At last it has come, the war that we knew was inevitable.”

Questions for Review
  1. Why did Germany decline to take a “naval holiday”?
  2. What is meant by “strategic railroads”?
  3. Why were the military leaders alarmed at the growth of the Socialist Party?
  4. What was the fate of popular government in Russia?
  5. How did the Junkers owe their power to the feudal system?
  6. How were the German merchants won over to war?
  7. What part had the gun-makers in bringing on war?

Chapter XVII.
The Spark that Exploded the Magazine

The year 1914.—England’s troubles.—Plots for a “Greater Serbia.”—The hated archduke.—The shot whose echoes shook the whole world.—Austria’s extreme demands.—Russia threatens.—Frantic attempts to prevent war.—Mobilizing on both sides.—Germany’s tiger-like spring.—The forts of the Vosges Mountains.—The other path to Paris.—The neutrality of Belgium.—Belgium defends herself.

The year 1914 found England involved in serious difficulties. Her parliament had voted to give home rule to Ireland. There was to be an Irish parliament, which would govern Ireland as the Irish wanted it governed. Ulster, a province in the northeast of Ireland, however, was very unhappy over this arrangement. Its people were largely of English and Scotch descent, and they were Protestants, while the other inhabitants of Ireland were Celts and Catholics. The people of this province were so bitter against home rule that they actually imported rifles and drilled regiments, saying that they would start a civil war if England compelled them to be governed by an Irish parliament.