History of the World War, Part I, The Attack on France

"The full generation that lay between the signing of the Treaty of Frankfort and the crisis of Tangier was marked by no very clear and definite march of events. Between the Revolutions of 1848 and the close of the Franco-Prussian War, Europe had lived through a long series of wars, not comparable in magnitude or sacrifice to the Napoleonic and Revolutionary struggles, but sufficiently considerable to satiate the people of the various nations and reconcile the statesmen to pacific policies. Germany, during the years of Bismarck, pursued a moderate course. His greatest concern was to preserve and strengthen the great structure he had reared. If the swift rise of France from defeat led him to a minatory gesture in 1875, he heeded the warnings that came from London and Petrograd. Throughout his period of power he skilfully managed to keep the door to the Russian capital open, and while he detested the British, he never sought to challenge them upon the water. To be sure, the Russo-Turkish War and the settlement of the Congress of Berlin led to an inevitable estrangement with Russia. Germany, having to choose between Russia and Austria, decided for the Habsburg, and the Congress of Berlin, by destroying the Treaty of San Stefano, deprived Russia of the fruits of her Turkish triumph, and by putting the Austro-Hungarian Empire, through Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the road to Saloniki, thus made a Franco-Russian alliance inevitable. But in Bismarck’s time this alliance was never a threat to German interests nor to German supremacy on the Continent, for Russia was in no mind to undertake the destruction of the Treaty of Frankfort to satisfy her French ally, while France was not willing to invite another invasion to replace the Crescent by the Cross at St. Sophia. In 1881, Bismarck, by clever manipulation, thrust France into Tunis and effectively aided by Crispi, the inveterate foe of France, was able to harvest from Italian anger the entrance of the Italian Kingdom into the Austro-German Alliance, thus creating the Triple Alliance, which was too strong to be challenged by France and Russia, and, as a defensive alliance, served as the corner-stone of European peace until the middle of the first decade of the Twentieth Century..."