If we received but little information regarding the strengthening of the German army, assuredly we had been receiving less for years previously regarding the construction of strategic railways on the German border where it meets Belgium and Luxemburg. An examination of a detailed map of this district will show the most careless observer that the strong German fortresses and garrison towns of Cologne, Coblenz, and Germersheim, are connected with the western frontiers by railway lines the only possible use of which must have been the transportation of troops and munitions of war. There is certainly no trade in western Germany demanding such a large number of tracks running east and west; and it was only by means of these railways that Germany was able to throw a million men across the frontier in less than forty-eight hours after war broke out. The pacific intentions of France may be judged from the fact that the lines on the French side of the frontier run for the most part north and south. One or two such items may pass. But when we consider them _seriatim_, we are bound to admit that Germany has shown consistent provocation for more than a decade. We may leave out of account, perhaps, the Kruger telegram and the German desire to assist Spain against the United States in 1898, not to mention the attitude of Germany at the time of the Boer war. There remains an entire series of provocations; the preamble to the first German Navy Act (1900), in which England as the enemy is all but mentioned by name; the visit of the Kaiser to Tangier; the bullying indulged in by the German representatives at the Algeciras Conference; the trouble almost forced on France over the Morocco question in 1907; the determined attitude taken up by the Kaiser against all Europe at the time of the Turkish revolution and the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria, in 1908-9; the stringent terms of the Potsdam Agreement with Russia in 1910; the sending of the _Panther_ to Agadir in 1911; the intractable attitude of the Wilhelmstrasse over the settlement of the Balkan question in 1912-13. With some effort, perhaps, any one of these incidents--and these are only a few of the more important--might be explained away with a veneer of plausibility; but, taken together, they are overwhelming in their proof that the German Empire has been a hotbed of unrest in Europe, not merely for the last two or three years, but for the last twenty. Where Germany led Austria followed; and numerous were the threats and imprecations levelled at Italy through the pliable medium of the semi-official Press because Rome did not always see eye to eye with Berlin and Vienna.