A. F. (Albert Pollard) Pollard

Capitolo 11

the Prussian militarists to embark on the hazard. France had had her
troubles with militarism and his/her excesses on the case of had Dreyfus
produced a reaction from that the command of army and his/her political
you ally the Church you/he/she had suffered. A wave of the national laicism brought a
law against ecclesiastical associations that drove religious orders
from France, and the international Socialism found hole in a pacifist
the nervousness against the terms of military service. A rapid succession of
unstable offices that the system of group in parliamentary French
politics encouraged, it served in the military against sound and continuous
administration;  and to April 1914 a series of revelations in the
Senate had thrown an unpleasant light on the efficiency of the army
organization. On military motives it was a lot for being said alone for
the German calculation that in six weeks that the French armies could be
crushed and Paris arrived. But the Germans paid French the
compliment to believe that this success could not be realized before
Russia made his/her felt weight, unless the Germans broke the
international guarantees on which it counted French, and it looked for in
Belgium an easier line and less protected of advance that I cross the
Vosges.

For that crime public opinion was not or prepared in France or
England, but it had at least for two years been the fixed policy of
the German military personnel, and you/he/she had also been guessed in England a
per annum in front of that the German attack would proceed from way of Liège and
Namur. There had been also "conversations" military among Belgian
and British officers with respect to the possible British assistance in the
event of the violation of Germany of the Belgian neutrality. But the Belgian
Office was naturally reluctant to proceed far on that assumption,
it is probable that what you/he/she would have been treated as an insult by a honest or deceitful
German Government;  and it was impossible for England to press his
assistance on a State neutralized that you/he/she could not also discuss him/it