History of the World War : $b An authentic narrative of the world's greatest warMarch, Francis A., Jr.
History
History of the World War : $b An authentic narrative of the world's greatest war
March, Francis A., Jr.
World War, 1914-1918
In brief, Germany had planned for war. She was approximately ready for
it. Under the shelter of such high-sounding phrases as "We demand our
place in the sun," and "The seas must be free," the German people were
educated into the belief that the hour of Germany's destiny was at hand.
[Illustration: Map of Africa.]
GERMANY'S POSSESSIONS IN AFRICA PRIOR TO 1914
German psychologists, like other German scientists, had co-operated with
the imperial militaristic government for many years to bring the
Germanic mind into a condition of docility. So well did they understand
the mentality and the trends of character of the German people that it
was comparatively easy to impose upon them a militaristic system and
philosophy by which the individual yielded countless personal liberties
for the alleged good of the state. Rigorous and compulsory military
service, unquestioning adherence to the doctrine that might makes right
and a cession to "the All-Highest," as the Emperor was styled, of
supreme powers in the state, are some of the sufferances to which the
German people submitted.
German propaganda abroad was quite as vigorous as at home, but
infinitely less successful. The German High Command did not expect
England to enter the war. It counted upon America's neutrality with a
leaning toward Germany. It believed that German colonization in South
Africa and South America would incline these vast domains toward
friendship for the Central empires. How mistaken the propagandists and
psychologists were events have demonstrated.
It was this dream of world-domination by Teutonic kultur that supplied
the motive leading to the world's greatest war. Bosnia, an unwilling
province of Austria-Hungary, at one time a province of Serbia and
overwhelmingly Slavic in its population, had been seething for years
with an anti-Teutonic ferment. The Teutonic court at Vienna, leading the
minority Germanic party in Austria-Hungary, had been endeavoring to
allay the agitation among the Bosnian Slavs. In pursuance of that
policy, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir-presumptive to the thrones of
Austria and Hungary, and his morganatic wife, Sophia Chotek, Duchess of
Hohenberg, on June 28, 1914, visited Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. On
the morning of that day, while they were being driven through the narrow
streets of the ancient town, a bomb was thrown at them, but they were
uninjured. They were driven through the streets again in the afternoon,
for purpose of public display. A student, just out of his 'teens, one
Gavrilo Prinzep, attacked the royal party with a magazine pistol and
killed both the Archduke and his wife.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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