When the Belgrade Government returned a reply which was fitted to serve as a basis for an arrangement, it was rejected by the Austrian Minister almost before he could have read it through. While the Kaiser in his letter to the Tsar, and the Imperial Chancellor in his talks with our Ambassador, were lavishing assurances that they were working hard to hold Austria back, the German Ambassador in Vienna, through whom they were thus claiming to put pressure on their ally, was openly advocating war with Servia, and emphatically declaring that Russia would have to stand aside. At the same moment Germany’s military preparations were secretly being pushed forward. But Austria, perceiving at last that the Germans’ estimate of Russia’s weakness was unfounded, and she herself faced with the nearing perils of an awful conflict with the great Slav Empire, drew back and agreed to submit the contentious points to mediation. Thereupon Germany sprang forward, and, without taking the slightest account of the Servian question, presented twelve-hour ultimatums to Russia and to France. Thus the thin pretension that she was but an ally, bound by the sacredness of treaty obligations to help her assailed co-partner, was cynically thrown aside, and she stood forth in her true colours as the real aggressor. In her forecast of the war which she had thus deliberately brought about the sheet-anchor of her hope of success was Great Britain’s neutrality. And on this she had built her scheme. Hence her solicitude that, at any rate, this postulate should not be shaken. Her infamous offer to secure it was one of the many expedients to which her Kaiser and his statesmen had recourse. But they had misread the British character. Their fatal misjudgment marks the fundamental divergence in ethical thought and feeling between the “culture” of Teutonism and the old-world civilization represented by Great Britain. They lack the ethical sense with which to perceive the motives which inspired the attitude of this country. They are able to understand and appreciate a war of revenge or a war of conquest, but they are incapable of conceiving the workings of a national mind which can undertake a costly and bloody war merely to uphold the sacredness of a treaty--a war for a mere scrap of paper.