Since the eighties international affairs had shown increasing tension. In Europe the struggle for national freedom, which marked the previous era, had in many cases been perverted into an endeavour to impose one nation's will upon another. Not only did France cherish the memory of Alsace-Lorraine; not only did Italy dream of her lost provinces; not only did the Balkan states plot to complete the half-done task of driving out the Turk; but the German Austrian sought to dominate the Magyar and the Magyar the Slav, while Italy swelled with visions of the Eastern Mediterranean once more a Roman {303} lake, and Pan-German and Pan-Slav drew and re-drew the map of Europe to their liking. But it was not in Europe alone that these nations sought expansion. The belief that empire overseas was necessary to national greatness, and that sea-power was the means to that end, spread through Continental Europe. During the thirty years following 1880 France added three and a half million square miles to her colonial possessions, Germany a million, and Italy a quarter-million. Even the United States was carried away by the current, and Great Britain, already the greatest of colonial powers, picked up nearly four million square miles more. Europe's aggression stirred sleeping Asia, and Japan gave promise of beating her teachers at their own game. This hasty parcelling out of the non-white world brought friction and often threatened war. For years a conflict with Russia was believed inevitable in England. Then France became the inevitable foe. Next Germany took up the role. Though felt at fewer points, her rivalry was more serious. A state with the ideals of mediaeval feudalism and the might of a modern industrial nation--with all the wealth and organizing power of industry and science at the disposal {304} of a monarchy based on 'divine right,' and a military aristocracy which moulded and mastered the nation through control of school and press and army--was a constant danger to its neighbours. Germany's aims were more aggressive than those of the western democracies, and its methods were more efficient than those of other European states of no higher ideals. True, the democratic and anti-militarist forces were gaining ground in Germany itself, while elsewhere the folly and waste of militarism were rousing unprecedented efforts towards peace. But no way out was found. It was clearly impossible for one state to disarm while its neighbours armed to the teeth. A few fitful efforts, in which Great Britain took an honourable part, to bring about a concerted halt came to nothing. The world appeared convinced that the only statesmanlike way to avert war was for each state or group of states to make itself stronger than every other state or group. The war of armaments went on unchecked. Europe slept on a powder-mine.