spoils of success were to be the accumulated riches of her neighbours and the world position which their skill and industry had built up through the centuries.
If England attempted to starve Germany, said Wangenheim, Germany's response would be a simple one: she would starve France. At that time, we must remember, Germany expected to have Paris within a week, and she believed that this would ultimately give her control of the whole country. It was evidently the German plan, as understood by Wangenheim, to hold this nation as a pawn for England's behaviour, a kind of hostage on a gigantic scale. In that case, should England gain any military advantage, Germany would attempt to counter-attack by torturing the whole French people. At that moment German soldiers were murdering innocent Belgians in return for the alleged misbehaviour of other Belgians, and evidently Germany had planned to apply this principle to whole nations as well as to individuals.
All through this and other talks, Wangenheim showed the greatest animosity to Russia.
"We've got our foot on Russia's corn," he said, "and we propose to keep it there."
By this he must have meant that Germany had sent the Goeben and the Breslau through the Dardanelles and that by that master-stroke she controlled Constantinople. The old Byzantine capital, said Wangenheim, was the prize which a victorious Russia would demand, and her lack of an all-the-year-round port in warm waters was Russia's tender spot—her "corn." At this time Wangenheim boasted that Germany had 174 German gunners at the Dardanelles, that the strait could be
