by these international conflicts, which sometimes broke out in war.
Germany had, indeed, in 1871, committed the great mistake of tearing Alsace and Lorraine against their will from France, and thus driving France into the arms of Russia. The French passion for revanche, for reunion with their disruptured and enslaved brethren, began, in the course of time, to take a milder form; all the more as the prospects of the French in a war with Germany grew ever worse; for the population of France remained almost stationary, while that of Germany rapidly increased, and on this account alone the latter gained a constantly growing superiority over France. In 1866 the territory of what became later the German Empire numbered forty million inhabitants; that of France thirty-eight millions. In 1870 if France had had to do, as she hoped, with Prussia alone, her enemy would have numbered only twenty-four millions. But in 1910 the population of France was only thirty-nine millions, as against sixty-five millions in Germany.
Hence the alarm of France at the thought of a war with the overpowering strength of Germany—an alarm still evident in the conditions of the Peace of Versailles. Hence, also, the need of the alliance with Russia.
Through the hostility which prevailed between Germany and France, Russia, after 1871, felt herself in the position of arbitrator between the two, and therefore master of the whole of continental Europe. Trusting in that position, Russia ventured in 1877 to make war on Turkey, and found in the end that she was only checked in the exploitation of her victory by England and Austria. In the Berlin Congress of 1878 Bismarck had to decide between these Powers and Russia. He
