the Entente and on the German proletariat. The ruling system would then have been doomed from the outset, while the German nation would have been saved. This menace to the reigning sovereigns of the Empire was recognized by Bethmann-Hollweg from the start, and his efforts were directed much less to the prevention of the war than to the creation of a favourable moral basis for it in Germany. To this he devoted his best attention, his entire acumen. And he succeeded in this task. For this purpose the German people had to be kept in ignorance of all that had actually taken place between Austria and Germany since the Serajevo outrage. It was, indeed, impossible to prevent the growth of a strong indignation against Austria's aggression; but they knew how to preserve their own halo as the peace-lover whose task was handicapped only by a second peculiarity of the German mind, a peculiarity no less laudable than its pacific temper—namely, its unwavering fidelity to a friend even when he has stumbled.
Foreign countries were, of course, mistrustful from the beginning. We have already seen examples of this in the case of French and English statesmen. The Belgian Baron Beyens wrote from Berlin to Brussels on July 26th:
“The existence of a preconcerted plan between Berlin and Vienna is proved in the eyes of my colleagues and myself by the persistence with which the Wilhelmstrasse denies that it had cognizance of the contents of the Austrian Note before Thursday last (July 23rd).”
Even the mistrustful elements, however, had no idea
how far this “preconcerted plan” went. The German
