In either case the war could readily have been avoided without material detriment to the community and without perceptible lesion to the national honour.
Both were "engineered" on grounds shamelessly manufactured _ad hoc_ by interested parties; in the one case by a coterie of dynastic statesmen, in the other by a junta of commercial adventurers and imperialistic politicians.

In neither case had the people any interest of gain or loss in the quarrel, except as it became a question of national prestige.

But both the German and the British community bore the burden and fought the campaign to a successful issue for those interested parties who had precipitated the quarrel.

The British people at large, it is true, bore the burden; which comes near being all that can be said in the way of popular approval of this war, which political statesmen have since then rated as one of the most profitable enterprises in which the forces of the realm have been engaged.

On the subject of this successful war the common man is still inclined to cover his uneasy sense of decency with a recital of extenuating circumstances.