In attempting to understand how Europe has (to use Lord Rosebery's phrase) "rattled into barbarism" in the uncompromising fashion which we see before our eyes, we must distinguish between recent operative causes and those more slowly evolving antecedent conditions which play a considerable, though not necessarily an obvious part in the result. Recent operative causes are such things as the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Serajevo, the consequent Austrian ultimatum to Servia, the hasty and intemperate action of the Kaiser in forcing war, and--from a more general point of view--the particular form of militarism prevalent in Germany. Ulterior antecedent conditions are to be found in the changing history of European States and their mutual relations in the last quarter of a century; the ambition of Germany to create an Imperial fleet; the ambition of Germany to have "a place in the sun" and become a large colonial power; the formation of a Triple Entente following on the formation of a Triple Alliance; the rivalry between Teuton and Slav; and the mutations of diplomacy and _Real-politik_. It is not always possible to keep the two sets of causes, the recent and the ulterior, separate, for they naturally tend either to overlap or to interpenetrate one another. German Militarism, for instance, is only a specific form of the general ambition of Germany, and the Austrian desire to avenge herself on Servia is a part of her secular animosity towards Slavdom and its protector, Russia. Nor yet, when we are considering the present _debacle_ of civilisation, need we interest ourselves overmuch in the immediate occasions and circumstances of the huge quarrel. We want to know not how Europe flared into war, but why. Our object is so to understand the present imbroglio as to prevent, if we can, the possibility for the future of any similar world-wide catastrophe. EUROPEAN DICTATORS