Excerpt from The Diplomatic Background of the War, 1870-1914 This position of primacy she utilized skillfully to secure a period of uninterrupted peace on the Conti nent, which gave her the necessary opportunity for organizing her imperial political institutions and developing the industrial and commercial activities essential to the economic life of the nation. With increasing intensity, the Germans created new indus tries, built up their mercantile marine, opened up new markets, laid down vessels of war, dreamed of colonies. And as a result partly of economic necessity and partly of a moral transformation that came over the Empire, German policy began to concern itself not merely with European matters, but with every thing that went on over all the globe. It was the inauguration of Germany's World Policy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.