Page:The Myth of a Guilty Nation.djvu/112

At the Foreign Office I found a more equitable and calmer estimate of the situation. They see in the reinforcement of the German armies not so much a provocation as an admission that circumstances have weakened Germany's military position, and that it must be strengthened. The Berlin Government is compelled to recognize that it can no longer count upon being supported by the whole force of its Austrian ally, now that a new Power, that of the Balkan Federation, has made its appearance in South-eastern Europe, right at the gates of the Dual Empire. … Under these circumstances, the Foreign Office sees nothing astonishing in Germany's finding it imperative to increase the number of her army corps. The Foreign Office also states that the Berlin Government had told the Paris Cabinet quite frankly that such were the motives for its action.

The same view was publicly expressed by Mr. Lloyd George himself as late as 1 January, 1914, when he said:

The German army was vital, not merely to the existence of the German Empire, but to the very life and independence of the nation itself, surrounded, as Germany is, by other nations, each of which possesses armies as powerful as her own. We forget that while we insist upon a sixty-per-cent superiority (as far as our naval strength is concerned) over Germany being essential to guarantee the integrity of our own shores, Germany herself has nothing like that superiority over France alone, and she has of course, in addition, to reckon with Russia

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