In the summer of
1914 Russia was believed to be on the edge of revolution.
As I have said in a previous chapter, the movement against
militarism, culminating in the extraordinary vote in the Reichstag
against the government at the time of the Zabern Affair, warned
the government and military people that the mass of Germans were
coming to their senses and were preparing to shake off the bogy of
militarism and fear, which had roosted so long on their shoulders
like a Prussian old-man-of-the-sea. The Pan-Germans and the
Annexationists were hot for war. The people alive could recall
only three wars, the war against Denmark in 1864, which was settled
in a few days and added the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein to
the Prussian crown, and the war of 1866 in which Bavaria, Baden,
Wurttemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Saxony were defeated, when the
Austrian kingdom of Hanover disappeared and the territories of
Hesse-Cassel and Nassau, and the free city of Frankfort were
added to Prussia. This war, from its declaration to the battle
of Koniggratz in which the Austrians were completely defeated,
lasted only two weeks.
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