Indeed, an unsatisfactory reply had been
received from France as to the latter's intentions, but Germany
endeavored to secure at least an assurance of England's neutrality. This
proved to be impossible.
How the German Government could indulge for a moment in the hope that in
a war with Russia and France on the one side and Germany and Austria on
the other, England could be induced to remain neutral passes
comprehension, but that it did believe this seems a certainty.
The English Government, no doubt, correctly felt that without the aid of
its immense resources, and particularly without the operations of its
great navy against Germany and Austria, the latter nations would find it
not so very difficult a task to dispose of both Russia and France.
English statesmen very promptly must have become alive to the
probability that a Germany which had subdued Russia and France, and thus
had made itself master of the Continent, would be unlikely long to
tolerate a continuance of England's world leadership.
So, even if the neutrality of Belgium had not been violated, other
reasons would have been found by England for joining France and Russia
in the war against Germany, for England would not risk, without any
effort to protect them, the loss of her continued domination of the
high seas and her undisputed possession of her vast colonial empire.
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