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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: they waggled flags at him until he was fourteen, incited him to
cheer, and then turned him out of school to begin that career of
private enterprise we have compactly recorded. France achieved
similar imbecilities; Germany was, if possible worse; Russia
under the waste and stresses of militarism festered towards
bankruptcy and decay. All Europe was producing big guns and
countless swarms of little Smallways. The Asiatic peoples had
been forced in self-defence into a like diversion of the new
powers science had brought them. On the eve of the outbreak of
the war there were six great powers in the world and a cluster of
smaller ones, each armed to the teeth and straining every nerve
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