It must be remembered in this connection that Prussia had a novel tradition of her own in such matters. The phrase "The Frederickian tradition" is an accurate phrase. Frederick the Great did start the open and avowed doctrine that a breach of international convention and of international morals is always tolerable in the aggrandizement of one's country.
I think one is not telling the truth if one says that the proposed violation of Belgian territory for the invasion of France was of a nature to cause an explosion of anger in the very hardened minds of the professional politicians in any modern country. There is not one group of them that has not been guilty of something of the sort before. But I think one is telling the truth if one says that the over-simple and cold way in which Prussia took it for granted that the violation of a solemn and most important treaty was nothing just shocked opinion, even of the politicians, sufficiently to help to incline the balance against her.
There is much more. The Prussian estimate of Russian, of French, and even of English psychology was very erroneous. The Prussian way of getting France not to join is about as subtle as spitting in a man's face, and the elephantine gambols of the German diplomats in London during the fatal week preceding the war were a positive aid to the catastrophe that was about to take place. They blundered as hard and as heavily as it was possible to blunder; going to the wrong people; despising the subtly powerful; paying court to the more advertised and less controlling of the English public men, and in a word behaving themselves after that fashion for which we have coined the adjective "newspaper."
There was further the peculiar aggravation of the tone in which the Austrian note had been addressed to Servia. There was further the patent and almost puerile double dealing of Berlin in the attempted negotiations for peace between Russia and Austria--in which negotiations the British Cabinet was very prominent. But beyond all these other minor points, these three causes I have mentioned, by their convergence, seem to have determined England's participation in the war, with all the enormous but as yet unguessed consequences that will follow therefrom.