In 1870 Prussia did not feel herself strong enough to face France and Great Britain alone. Elated by the unexpected results of the war of 1870, and attributing them wholly to her own prowess instead of largely to the unpreparedness of France, her designs against the Netherlands were revived. Not France was the obstacle feared, but Great Britain. If we are to seek for the true reason of the anti-British spirit fostered in Germany, and certainly not discountenanced by official influence, it will be found in Great Britain standing in the way of this design. Colonies and _welt-politik_ were the open talk of Pan-Germanism, but expansion east and west on the Continent of Europe was the definite objective of the plans so minutely prepared at Berlin; and of the costly and extensive apparatus of espionage spread like a network over Europe. This was the dream of riches before the eyes of the German subaltern as he ate the meal of a few pence which his “Spartan poverty” compelled him to take in a cheap café, and puzzled how to live without falling into debt. We need not search far for evidence. If the reader looks at the map of western Germany he will see that a bunch of railway-lines stretch to half a dozen points of the compass east of Aix-la-Chapelle like the extended fingers of a hand. They link Aix with eastern, northern, and southern Germany. Now Aix is not a great commercial centre. It is merely a watering-place. There is no more reason why Aix should be a huge railway-centre with vast sidings, and miles of platforms than, say, Wiesbaden. But these are not commercial railways. So far as ordinary traffic goes their construction represents almost a dead loss. The railways are military and strategical. Regarding their construction one or two interesting facts have to be noted. The first is that their construction began just after the Boer War broke out; was almost coincident indeed with the famous telegram of the Kaiser on British reverses. The second fact is that the surveys, plans, and estimates for these railways must have been made long before, and been waiting in a pigeon-hole for a convenient opportunity. Now ever since the days of the Great Elector Frederick William the affairs of Prussia have been administered with an economy which might almost be called parsimony. It is utterly foreign to Prussian spirit and tradition to spend millions of money without very good reason for it. Remarkably enough, another bunch of these railways, equally without ordinary traffic, converge upon the frontier of Holland. Just, as Scharnhorst was the inventor of the German universal service system, and von Hindersin the organiser of their artillery, so von Moltke was perhaps the first military man who appreciated thoroughly the importance of railways in war, and their value in that rapid hurling of masses of troops into a hostile country before its defence can be put upon a war-footing, which is the corner-stone of German strategy.