_Delenda est Carthago!_ From that day the doom of "German militarism" was sealed; and England, democratic England, lay down with the Czar in the same bed to which the French housewife had already transferred her republican counterpane.
The duration of peace became only a question of time, and the war of to-day only a question of opportunity and pretext.

Each of the parties to the understanding had the same clear purpose to serve, and while the aim to each was different the end was the same.

Germany's power of defence must be destroyed.

That done each of the sleeping partners to the unsigned compact would get the share of the spoils, guarded by armed German manhood, he coveted.
To Russia, the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary and the incorporation of the Slav elements in part into her own vast empire, in part into a vassal and subordinate Balkan Confederacy.
To France the restoration of Lorraine, with Metz, and of Alsace with Strasburg and their 1,500,000 of German speaking Teutons to the French Empire.
To England, the destruction of German sea-power and along with it the permanent crippling of German competition in the markets of the world.
Incidentally German colonies would disappear along with German shipping, and with both gone a German navy would become a useless burden for a nation of philosophers to maintain, so that the future status of maritime efficiency in Europe could be left to the power that polices the seas to equitably fix for all mankind, as well as for the defeated rival.
Such an outline was the altruistic scope of the unsigned agreement entered into by the three parties of the _Triple Entente_; and it only remained to get ready for the day when the matter could be brought to issue.

The murder of the Archduke Ferdinand furnished Russia with the occasion, since she felt that her armies were ready, the sword sharpened, and the Entente sure and binding.
The mobilization by Russia was all that France needed "to do that which might be required of her by her interests." (Reply of the French Government to the German Ambassador at Paris, August 1st, 1914.) Had the neutrality of Belgium been respected as completely as the neutrality of Holland, England would have joined her "friends" in the assault on Germany, as Sir Edward Grey was forced to admit when the German Ambassador in vain pressed him to state his own terms as the price of English neutrality.
The hour had struck.