Excerpt from The Naval History of the World War: Offensive Operations, 1914 1915 After the War Of 1870 Germany had steadily gained power, under the shrewd policies of Bismarck, who Skil fully took advantage of the enmity between Great Brit ain and Russia at the end of the russo-turkish War of 1877, and made Germany a dominating power in Europe at the Congress of Berlin at which the treaties were drawn up after that war. In 1879 the alliance be tween Germany and austria-hungary had been made, which became the Triple Alliance when joined by Italy. But Great Britain was influenced by anti-russian poli cies, and in fact had even fostered the growth of Ger many as a buffer against Russia. 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.