While State Senator Calvin Coolidge, of Northampton, was plodding
his way up the road from law-maker to executive-assistant, to governor,
to the nomination for Vice President by his party, the forces in Amer-
ica that smoothed his path and lightened his burden on the way to fame
were working in the world beyond the boundaries of the United States.
Sparks from the gun at Sarajevo set off the powder in the social dynamite
that had been under compression for fifteen years.

We cannot say even today that the World War was inevitable. Diplomacy
might have found a way out. For the remoter causes of the war, we
must look to mistakes and selfish policies in Germany, France, England,
Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Balkans. For the immediate outbreak of
the war, Germany must bear the heaviest blame. Bismarck would never
have taken Germany into war under conditions that made world sentiment
outside overwhelmingly hostile. Bismarck, the diplomat, respected world
opinion; overruled the German military strategists of his day. And the Ger-
man diplomats of 1914, likewise, respected world opinion, and feared the
course that Germany was taking. But the military strategists of Germany
were, by this time, in the saddle, and they overruled the diplomats. It is not
fair to say that German diplomacy failed in 1914. It is fairer to say that Ger-
man diplomacy never had a chance, and, therefore, that British and French
diplomacy likewise did not have a chance, since in dealing with German
diplomats, they were dealing with impotent men. ¹ Bethmann Hollweg
admits this. ² Speaking of General von Moltke, he says: "I had to accom-
modate my view to his." Bethmann Hollweg also emphasizes the intrigues
of the militarists in Russia ³ in preventing a peaceful settlement in 1914.

False economic theories contributed a great deal in bringing about the
World War. That economic tendencies inevitably produced the war, of
course, cannot be proved, but many historians hold to this thesis. But this
much is certain: America did become part of the economic chaos of those

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