secured its chief ally in Austria-Hungary. American imperialism entered the conflict comparatively late, after watching for a time how the European Powers were exhausting themselves by their struggles.
In addition to militarism, one of the most abominable methods employed in the rivalry between the imperialist Powers is secret diplomacy, which avails itself of secret treaties and plots, and which does not shrink from the use of the assassin’s knife and the dynamiter’s bomb. The real aims of the imperialist war were embodied in the secret treaties between Britain, France, and Russia, on the one hand, and between Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria, on the other. It is manifest that secret agents of the Entente were privy to the assassination of the Austrian crown prince, which occurred five weeks before the war. On the other hand, German diplomacy was by no means disconcerted by the murder. For example, Rohrbach, the German imperialist, wrote: “We may deem ourselves fortunate that the great anti-German conspiracy declared itself before the appointed time