Make war deliberately whenever you think that you may get profit from it. Find an excuse, but let it be an excuse which will give you a strong position before the world and help your alliances. Take advantage of your neighbour's temporary weakness in order to attack him. Pretend to be friendly in order to screen warlike preparations. Do not let contracts or treaties stand in the way of your vital interests. All of these monstrous propositions are to be found in this _vade mecum_ of the German politician and soldier, and each of them has been put in actual practice within a very few years of the appearance of the book. Take each of them in turn. Take first the point that they made war deliberately, and took advantage of the imagined weakness of their neighbours in order to attack them. When was it that they backed up, if they did not actually dictate, the impossible ultimatum addressed as much to Russia as to Servia? When was it that they were so determined upon war that they made peace impossible at the moment when Austria was showing signs of reconsidering her position? Why so keen at that particular moment? Was it not that for the instant each of her three antagonists seemed to be at a disadvantage? Russia was supposed not to have recovered yet from her Japanese misadventure. France was torn by politics, and had admitted in the Senate that some important branches of her armies were unprepared. Britain seemed to be on the verge of civil war. It was just such a combination as was predicated by Bernhardi. And his country responded to it exactly as he had said, choosing the point of quarrel against the Slav race so as to conciliate the more advanced or liberal nations of the world. Then again they pretended to be friendly in order to cover hostile preparations. To the very last moment the German Minister in Brussels was assuring the Government of King Albert that nothing but the best intentions animated those whom he represented, and that Belgian neutrality was safe. The written contract was deliberately dishonoured on the false and absurd plea that if they did not dishonour it some one else would. Thus, of the five propositions which had seemed most monstrous and inhuman in Bernhardi's book in 1912, every single one had been put into actual practice by his country in 1914. Those of us who advised at the time that the book should be taken seriously have surely been amply justified.