Suchergebnisse

On January 18, 1919, the forty-eighth anniversary of the proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles after the invasion of France in 1870-1871, there assembled in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Paris a meeting of the representatives of the Allied and Associated belligerent Powers, as well as the Powers which had broken off diplomatic relations, to decide upon the terms of peace to be offered to Germany and her allies.Emulating Bismarck, who used the emasculated telegram of Ems as the pretext of waging a war of conquest upon France, William II and his General Staff seized upon the rupture between Austria-Hungary and Serbia growing out of the assassination of the Austrian Crown Prince at Serajevo in June, 1914, as the pretext for launching Germany upon a carefully prepared program of world domination. Fearful lest delay might result in the loss of the opportunity for which she had deliberately planned and anxiously awaited, within a week after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914, Germany had declared war on Russia and France and had shamelessly violated the neutrality of Belgium which she had solemnly undertaken to respect. Great Britain, for self-protection and in response to treaty obligations, immediately entered the war against Germany, and was successively followed from time to time, as Germany evinced her disregard of international law, the laws of war and the dictates of humanity, by all the other large Powers and many of the smaller ones whose interests were jeopardized or rights infringed upon by Germany's increasingly reckless and ruthless conduct.