The Boy Scouts on the Trail | Page 3

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 is not a cripple or diseased, has to be a soldier for three years, the sight of a uniform, even of a long column of marching troops, means nothing.
And then, with the most startling abruptness, there came a change. Nothing official, as yet. But suddenly the government allowed the real news, or most of it, to be printed. Austria had made demands of Servia