The Boy Scouts on the Trail | Page 3

should be trouble, not a man would be left in this school.
So, Barnes, I should be easier if you were with Martin. I approve. That
is well, boys."
Both boys were excited as they left the office.

"He talks as if he knew something, or felt something, that is still a
secret!" said Frank, excitedly. "I wonder--"
"Of no use to wonder," said Henri. Really, he was calmer than his
companion. "What is to come must come. But you are coming home
with me, Frank. We know that much. And that is good--that is the best
news we could have, isn't it?"
"It's certainly good news for me," said Frank, happily. "Oh, Harry, I get
so tired of living in school or in hotels all the time! It will seem good to
be in a home again, even if it isn't my own home!"
CHAPTER II
TO THE COLORS
In those days late in July, France, less than almost any country in
Europe, certainly far less than either England or America, was able to
realize the possibilities of trouble. As a matter of fact, not for years had
the peace of Europe been so assured, apparently. President Poincare of
France had gone to visit the Czar of Russia, and the two rulers had
exchanged compliments. The alliance of France and Russia, they told
one another, made war impossible, or nearly so. The Emperor of
Germany was on a yachting cruise; even the old Austrian Kaiser,
though required to watch affairs because of the death of his heir, the
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, murdered by a Serb fanatic at Sarajeve, had
left Vienna.
Even when the storm cloud began to gather the French government did
all it could to suppress the news. The readiness of France was not in
question. France was always ready, as Henri Martin had said. Since the
grim and terrible lesson of 1870 she had made up her mind never again
to give the traditional enemy beyond the Rhine--and, alas, now on this
side of the Rhine as well!--a chance to catch her unprepared.
What the government wanted was to prevent the possibility that an
excited populace, especially in Paris, might force its hand. If war came
it meant that Germany should provoke it--if possible, begin it. It was

willing to sacrifice some things for that. And this was because, in the
years of peace, France had won a great diplomatic victory, the fruits of
which the country must preserve. In 1870 France had had to face
Germany alone. She had counted upon help from Austria, now
Germany's firm friend and ally, but then still smarting under the blow
of the defeat four years before. She had hoped for help, perhaps, from
Roumania and from Russia.
But all that Germany, by skillful trickery, had rendered vain. She had
made France seem to be the aggressor, and France had forfeited the
sympathy of England and of Austria as a result. Alone she had been no
match for Germany. And alone she would be as little a match for
Germany in 1914 as in 1870. But she had prepared herself. Now Russia,
no matter what the reason for war, would be with her. And, if France
was attacked, England was almost sure to join her. Everything would
depend on that. With the great English navy to bottle up the German
fleet, to blockade the German coasts, France felt that she was secure.
And so the government was resolved that nothing should happen to
make possible the loss of England's friendship; nothing that should give
England even the shadow of an excuse for remaining neutral.
So what the newspapers printed of the threats that Austria was making
against Servia was carefully censored. There was nothing to show that
Austria was assuming a warlike attitude, and that Russia, the friend of
the little Slav countries in the Balkans, was getting ready to take the
part of Servia. There was nothing to show what the French government
and every newspaper editor in Paris knew must be a fact--that Austria
must have had assurance of German support, since she could not hope
to make a winning fight, unaided, against the huge might of Russia.
That was why all over France life proceeded in the regular way, calm,
peaceful, without event. Some there were who knew that Europe was
closer to a general war than since the end of Napoleon's dream of
conquest. But the masses of the people did not know it. All over France
the soldiers were active; the new recruits, reporting for the beginning of
their three years of military service, were pouring into the depots, the
headquarters of the army corps, to be assigned to their regiments. But

that was something that happened every year. In a country where every
man, if he