Even when Austria began to show her teeth, it still seemed an "incident" quite beyond our horizon. If Austria and Serbia did come to blows, Great Britain was not even indirectly involved, and the British Army, therefore, remained unmoved. The Balkan peoples were constantly in a state of warlike commotion, but their troubles hardly affected the great British Empire. The war clouds, that from time to time darkened the European sky, had hitherto always been dispersed. More than once of late years the German Emperor had rattled his sword in the scabbard, and talked or telegraphed to the very limits of indiscretion, but nothing had ever come of it, nor did it seem at all probable that the assassination of an Austrian Archduke could be made the pretext for a European conflagration. There were, however, certain elements of danger in the European situation at this particular juncture. The creation of the Triple Alliance--Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy--had made necessary some counter-move by the other European Powers. And the _entente_ between England and France, initiated by King Edward, and originally intended merely for the settlement of outstanding differences between the two countries, became eventually the basis of a second grouping of nations. This _entente_ was followed by one between England and Russia; and although in neither was there anything in the nature of a defensive alliance, it was well known that there was in existence--though the exact terms of it had never been made public--a far stronger agreement between France and Russia. Meanwhile it was generally known that, all the time these several _ententes_ were being formed, Germany had been steadily preparing for war. For forty years, with characteristic thoroughness of method, the Germans had been diligently organising their forces to this end. Not only had the Army been perfected into a first-class fighting machine, but the civil population had all been assigned the parts they were to play in the coming campaign. Trade problems had been handled, not so much with a view to commercial prosperity pure and simple, as to ensure to Germany a sufficient supply of the commodities which would be needed in a great war. Gigantic preparations had been made for a limitless output of shells and ammunition, and plans carefully elaborated for the conversion of factories of all kinds into workshops for war material. The whole State Railway system was controlled in such a way that, on the declaration of war, troops could be instantly concentrated at any selected spot with the utmost speed.