sia was scheming for an extension of the Slav ascendancy to Constantinople and through Serbia to the Adriatic. Great Britain and France, despite the fact that they possessed the largest overseas empires, were disturbed lest some power might seek to obtain a 'place in the sun' at their expense. Imperialism thus produced conflicting national interests which made a great war possible. The problem of Military AlliancesRelated to the clash of imperialistic programs had been the construction of numerous entangling alliances. The pattern of alliances which divided Europe made each side less flexible than otherwise might have been the case. Germany backed Austria against the Serbs not so much because the Serbs interested Germany, but because the Austrian monarchy was the only ally Germany could count upon to help counterbalance the threat of encirclement by the rival alliance of France, Great Britain, and Russia. Similar calculations required the French to rally to the side of Russia in order to ensure Russian help against Germany in some future crisis. The problem of Military PlanningBy 1914 Europe had come to be divided into two rival groups of heavily armed powers. With the growth of military machines there developed in each country a general staff of experts, whose chief concern was to prevent the army of another power from 'getting the jump' on them in time of international crisis. These general staffs worked out carefully calculated 'timetables' of what must be done if war should break out. According to these mobilization plans, millions of reservists had to be called up from civilian life, issued equipment, and then be transported to the frontier as fast as available railway transport allowed. The irony of the situation was that the more carefully every last railway car had been put to use by the mobilization plan, the more costly any modification of the plan became. Everybody wanted to be prepared to strike first, and in every internati...
