The Barbarism of Berlin
was not already bound to stand by her, or as if his new promise could be of more value than the old one.” That passage was written by Macaulay, but so far as the mere contemporary facts are concerned it might have been written by me.
Upon the immediate logical and legal origin of the English interest there can be no rational debate. There are some things so simple that one can almost prove them with plans and diagrams, as in Euclid. One could make a kind of comic calendar of what would have happened to the English diplomatist, if he had been silenced every time by Prussian diplomacy. Suppose we arrange it in the form of a kind of diary:
- July 24: Germany invades Belgium.
- July 25: England declares war.
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