If there were people in Germany inclined to overlook or to minimize this constantly growing menace from France, their eyes must have been opened when in 1912 the French Government, having previously abolished the one-year volunteers, raised the duration of active military service for every Frenchman from two years to three, and, in addition to this, called out in the Autumn of 1913 the recruits not only of the year whose turn had come, namely, the recruits born in 1892, but also those born in 1893. This was a measure nearly identical with mobilization; it was a measure which clearly showed that France would not delay much longer striking the deadly blow. For no nation could possibly stand for any length of time this terrific strain of holding under the colors its entire male population from the twentieth to the twenty-fourth year. No wonder that the Paris papers were speaking as long ago as the Summer of 1912 of the regiments stationed in the Eastern Departments as the "vanguard of our glorious army," and were advocating double pay for them, as being practically in contact with the enemy. The second foe now threatening the destruction of Germany is England. Can it truly be said that England's hostility has been brought about by German aggression? True, Germany has built a powerful navy; but so have Japan, the United States, France, and even Italy. Has England felt any menace from these? Why, then, is the German Navy singled out as a specially sinister threat to England? Has German diplomacy during the last generation been particularly menacing to England? Germany has acquired some colonies in Africa and in the Far East. But what are Kamerun and Dar-es-Salaam and Kiao-Chau compared with the colonial possessions of the other great powers? Where has Germany pursued a colonial aggressiveness that could in any way be compared with the British subjugation of the South African republics or the Italian conquest of Tripoli or the French expansion in Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco, or the American acquisition of the Philippines? Her Open-Door Policy. Wherever Germany has made her influence felt on the globe she has stood for the principle of the open door. Wherever she has engaged in colonial enterprises, she has been willing to make compromises with other nations and to accept their co-operation, notably so in the Bagdad railway undertaking. And yet, the colonial expansion of every other nation is hailed by England as "beneficial to mankind," as "work for civilization"; the slightest attempt of Germany to take part in this expansion is denounced as "intolerable aggression," as evidence of the "bullying tendencies of the War Lord."