The Austro-Germans, profiting by this basic mistake of the civil and military chiefs of the Entente, were able in October-November, 1915, to join hands with Bulgaria and Turkey over the corpse of Serbia. From that time on, the General Staff at Berlin has been profiting by this situation, improving it and consolidating it by seizing half of Roumania toward the close of 1916. The direct result of the mistakes of the Allies, coupled with the methodical procedure of Berlin, has been the realization of nine tenths of Pan-Germany. This Pan-Germany is composed of two elements. First, the great occupied territories taken by Germany from Belgium, France, Russia, Serbia, and Roumania. Second, the practical seizure effected by her at the expense of her own allies: Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey; for, as a matter of fact, the Quadruple Alliance is nothing but a great illusion carefully fostered by the Kaiser for the purpose of concealing the true situation from the neutrals—particularly the United States, which was then in that category. If one wishes to see things as they are, one must realize that Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey are _not_ the allies—that is, the equals—of Germany. These three states are practically the vassals of Berlin, in whose sight they count for scarcely more than Saxony or Bavaria. The principal proof of this state of affairs lies in the fact that the Kaiser wields an uncontested supremacy from Hamburg to the British front at Bagdad. Since the beginning of hostilities there has been a formidable extension of Prussian militarism. At first, it held in its grasp only the sixty-eight million people of the German Empire. By April, 1915, it had extended and organized its influence among the thirty millions of Austro-Hungarians, who until that time had taken orders from their own independent military chiefs. After October-November, 1915,—the date of Serbia’s downfall,—the Prussian system reached out to Bulgaria and Turkey. By taking account of these extensions and adding together the populations of the territories occupied by Germany, together with those of her infatuated allies, one finds that to-day Prussian militarism no longer controls sixty-eight million souls, as at the beginning of the war, but about one hundred and seventy-six million European and Ottoman subjects. This is the brutal, overwhelming fact which Americans must face if they wish to learn the sole solution of the war which will assure to them, as well as to the rest of the world, a durable peace. The following figures will show how the three groups of the population of Pan-Germany were divided at the beginning of 1917:—