OF
THE GREAT WAR
Volume I
CHAPTER 1
The World Drift to War
EVERY war, like everything that happens, is but the outcome of something that has happened before: the result of preceding causes. For the real origins of the vast upheaval that broke upon the world in 1914 we should have to dig very deeply into the past if we wished to arrive at a proper understanding of what took place; but it may suffice for our present purpose if we go no farther back than the events of 1870-71, when the seeds of the war of 1914-18 and its almost equally calamitous aftermath were sown with so prodigal a hand.
In 1870 the rivalry of France and Germany had been for over 1,000 years a main issue in European politics, and historians have traced it step by step from the 9th century — when the empire of Charlemagne broke into pieces and Lorraine, though not as yet Alsace, became a debatable land — until the present day. The cleavage between the East Franks, soon to be known as Germans, and the West Franks, who, in the form of France, kept the name hitherto common to both, is usually dated from 842 when the two Frankish rulers, on taking an oath of peace at Strasbourg, found it necessary to prepare the formula in two languages, so different had the speech of the two branches of the Franks become. Throughout the later Middle Ages the rivalry continued, though the French kings found their main occupation in