It was the old historic story of German duplicity, and the nations of Europe had no excuse for being surprised. When the Prussian Monarchy was first bestowed on the relatively humble family of the Höhenzollerns, they found their territory for the most part sterile, the soil round Berlin and about Potsdam--the favourite residence of the Margraves--a sandy desert that could scarcely be made to yield a crop of rye or oats, so they set themselves to enlarge and enrich it by help of an army out of all proportion to the size and importance of their States. The results were inevitable. When war becomes the trade of a separate class it is natural that they should wish to pursue it at the first favourable opportunity of conquest. That opportunity came to Prussia when Charles VI died and the Archduchess Maria Theresa succeeded to her father by virtue of a law (the Pragmatic Sanction), to which all the Powers of Europe had subscribed. Frederick had subscribed to it. But, nevertheless, in the name of Prussia, without any proper excuse or even decent pretext, he took possession of Silesia, thereby robbing the ally whom he had bound himself to defend, and committing the same great crime of violating his pledged word, which Germany has now committed against Belgium. But there was one difference between the outrages of 1740 and 1914. The great barrator made no hypocritical pretence of desiring peace. “Ambition, interest, the desire of making people talk about me carried the day, and I decided for war,” he said. It was reserved for Harnack and Hauptmann, not to speak of the Kaiser, to cant about the responsibilities of “Kul-tur” (that harlot of the German dictionary, debased by all ignoble uses), about the hastening of the kingdom of heaven, and about the German sword being sanctified by God. But the old German Adam remained, and when, two days before the declaration of war with France, the German soldiers were flying to the Belgian frontier there was no thought of the Archduke Ferdinand or of the doddering old man on the Austrian throne, whose paternal heart had been sorely wounded. Germany was out to rob France of her colonies--to rob her, and the Germans knew it. “A few centuries may have to run their course,” said their own poet Goethe (who surely knew the German soul), “before it can be said of the German people, ‘It is a long time since they were barbarians.’”