But Germany was literally too well informed and too little qualified to determine the bearings of the overwhelming mass of materials for a judgment which were laid before her. While immersing herself in so-called facts, she left out of sight the soul of the nation, with whose holiest possessions she was about to tamper. Despite her undoubted gifts of observation and analysis, Prussianized Germany is entirely lacking in the psychological sense. She deals with the superficial, the obvious. As though a nation’s history were the resultant of a sequence of lifeless events, of outward changes! As though the inherited streams of racial impulse, of national volition, of patriotic, irrepressible energy went for nothing in the equation! As though the latent forces and tendencies of centuries would not be brought into far resonant action by the rousing of slumbering passion, by the fire-flames which the shock of war must kindle! In all her minute calculations, Prussia’s materialistic leaders lost sight of the spiritual, of the ideals that haunt a nation’s soul and infuse into it in moments of stress a superhuman strength capable of working miracles. The wild enthusiasm dormant in the Russian race, but ready to start into life and action for the support of a heroic cause, constitute an algebraical x for the Prussian calculator, who can measure only coarse energies and brutal forces. CHAPTER IV FORCING THE QUARREL 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 move a finger to baulk Austria of her prey. And this was an all-important factor in the reckoning of the Teutonic States. Russia’s active participation in the war would perhaps entail, besides the onrush of her own countless swarms, the co-operation of France, whereas the fundamental axiom of Prussia’s war policy was to seek to try issues with each member of the Entente separately, and for this purpose to force such a quarrel, now upon one, now upon the other, as would leave the interests of that member’s allies untouched for the time being. A further device was to constrain the enemy formally to play the part of aggressor, so as to provide a convenient bridge for the allies to withdraw within the sphere of benevolent neutrality. This latter precaution was not adopted towards Russia, the reason being the aforesaid conviction that, come what might, Russia’s inactivity was a foregone conclusion. There are convincing grounds for my statement that this consideration supplied the motive for the Kaiser’s amendment to the Austrian ultimatum, limiting the time given to Servia for reflection to forty-eight hours[7] and for according to the Russians only twelve hours to demobilize.