In the years immediately preceding the war the mass of the people in Germany, rich and poor, were attached to peace and dreaded war. But there was there also a powerful minority either desiring war or expecting it, and, in either case, preparing it by their agitation. And this minority could appeal to the peculiarly aggressive form of patriotism inculcated by the public schools and universities. The war party based its appeal for ever fresh armaments on the hostile preparations of the Powers of the Entente. Its aggressive ambition masqueraded, perhaps even to itself, as a patriotism apprehensively concerned with defence. It was supported by powerful moneyed interests; and the mass of the people, passive, ill-informed, preoccupied, were defenceless against its agitation. The German Government found the Pangermans embarrassing or convenient according as the direction of its policy and the European situation changed from crisis to crisis. They were thus at one moment negligible, at another powerful. For long they agitated vainly, and they might long have continued to do so. But if the moment should come at which the Government should make the fatal plunge, their efforts would have contributed to the result, their warnings would seem to have been justified, and they would triumph as the party of patriots that had foretold in vain the coming crash to an unbelieving nation. [Footnote 1: "L'Enigme Allemande," 1914.] [Footnote 2: See "L'Allemagne avant la guerre," pp. 97 seq. and 170 seq. Bruxelles, 1915.] [Footnote 3: A Frenchman, M. Maurice Ajam, who made an inquiry among business men in 1913 came to the same conclusion. "Peace! I write that all the Germans without exception, when they belong to the world of business, are fanatical partisans of the maintenance of European peace." See Yves Guyot, "Les causes et les conséquences de la guerre," p. 226.] [Footnote 4: See French Yellow Book, No. 5.] 10. _German Policy, from 1890-1900_.