"Of course the Government points to the general situation in Europe and speaks of the 'Slav Peril.' As far as I can see, however, public opinion really seems indifferent to this 'Peril,' and yet it has accepted with a good grace, if not with welcome, the enormous burdens of these two successive laws....
"To sum up, if public opinion does not actually point at France, as does the 'Kölnische Zeitung,' we are in fact, and shall long remain the nation aimed at. Germany considers that for our 40,000,000 of inhabitants our place in the sun is really too large.
"Germans wish for peace—so they keep on proclaiming, and the emperor more than anyone—but they do not understand peace as involving either mutual concessions or a balance of armaments. They want to be feared and they are at present engaged in making the necessary sacrifices. If on some occasion their national vanity is wounded, the confidence which the country will feel in the enormous superiority of its army will be favorable to an explosion of national anger, in the face of which the moderation of the Imperial Government will perhaps be powerless.
"It must be emphasized again that the Government is doing everything to increase patriotic sentiment by celebrating with éclat all the various anniversaries of 1813.
"The trend of public opinion would result in giving a war a more or less national character. By whatever pretext Germany should justify the European conflagration, nothing can prevent the first decisive blows being struck at France."
The second inclosure in M. Cambon's letter is the report of M. de Faramond, Naval Attaché. He says that there will be no increase in the German fleet this year, and that the whole military effort will be directed against France.
By October 1, 1914, the imperial army will be increased from 720,000 to 860,000 men, and proposed legislation will place the army corps near the French frontier most nearly on a war footing, in order on the very day of the outbreak of hostilities to attack us suddenly with forces very much stronger than our own. It is absolutely imperative for the Imperial Government to obtain success at the very outset of the operations....
"William II cannot allow a retreat to enter into his calculations, although the German soldier is no longer to-day what he was forty years ago, a plain religious man, ready to die at the order of his king. When it is remembered that at the last elections 4,000,000 votes were cast by the Socialists and that the franchise is only obtained in Germany at the age of twenty-five, it may be presumed that the active army, composed of young men from twenty to twenty-five, must contain in its ranks a considerable proportion of Socialists.
"It would indeed be foolish to think that the German Socialists will throw down their rifles on the day when France and Germany come to blows; but it will be very important that the Imperial Government should persuade them that on the one hand we are the aggressors, and on the other that they can have entire confidence in the direction of the campaign and its final result....
"And it is because a German defeat at the outset would have such an incalculable effect on the empire that we find in all the plans worked out by the general staff proposals for a crushing offensive movement against France.