The Spectator at war: ‘Why has it come?’

From ‘Topics of the Day’, The Spectator, 8 August 1914:

‘How does it happen that within a week Germany and Austria-Hungary are at war with France, with Russia, with Britain, with Servia, with Belgium, and that it is exceedingly likely that to the list will have to be added Holland, Switzerland, and Denmark, and later Italy, Roumania and Greece?

‘…Our answer is one which we feel bound to give because we believe it, even though it may seem to a section of our readers unjust to Germany. We believe Germany made the war, and made it because she feared that unless war came now she might have to give up her strongest national aspiration – the aspiration to be a great world-Power, dominant in Europe, with vast dependencies abroad, and able to command the sea, or at any rate to be possessed of naval strength greater than that of every other Power but Britain, with the certain prospect of equaling Britain in the future, and of developing eventually into the pre-dominant naval State.