if we take loans into account, the proportion was even greater. Here are the figures. For every £100 spent in tsarist Russia, there were spent:
The budgets of other States were of the same character. Look at “democratic” Britain, for instance. In the year 1904, for every £100 spent, there were spent:
29. The imperialist War of 1914 to 1918.
It was inevitable that the imperialist policy of the “Great Powers” should sooner or later bring them into collision. Indisputably, the game of grab played by all the “Great Powers” was the real cause of the war. Only an idiot can continue to believe that the war took place because the Serbs killed the Austrian crown prince or because the Germans invaded Belgium. At the outset, there was much dispute as to who was responsible for the catastrophe. The German capitalists maintained that Russia was the aggressor, whereas the Russians proclaimed everywhere that Germany began it. In Britain the word went round that the British had entered the struggle on behalf of “gallant little