ABSTRACT
The remote causes of the present war some are real and others imaginary, but even those which are the most imaginary are not by any means the least effective when one regards them as incentives to action. A half-century of preparatory causes and a week of immediate ones led up to the European War. The theory that the over-population of Germany was one cause of the war is widely held both in that country and in France. The French as well as the Germans themselves are firmly convinced that one of the causes of the war was the desire on the part of Germany to open up commercial markets for it products. The remote political events show that in allowing Prussia to crush Austria at Sadowa, the statesmen of the period made a very serious mistake, for which the political blindness that seemed to afflict them all is only a slight excuse.
