At the time, Germany was a newcomer in imperialism, and had been in a several decades long naval arms race in battleships, armor quality, and big guns (as well as cruisers, submarines and smaller ships). Kaiser Wilhelm II was also a bellicose fool. France had done its imperialist thing and kept its navy more or less current, but had not challenged Britain for almost a century. Britain France and Russia had a treaty of alliance which, while paper, Germany was seen as the most dangerous potential enemy and had declared war on Russia.
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The timeline of history is invaluable here.
Julius Caesar was a strong advocate for the expansion of Roman reach and power.
His early objectives included Gaul and then Germania, yet Caesar needed the Roman
Senate to agree, as they had to foot the bill through taxation.
In his War Dispatches, Caesar continuously explained to his Senate that the core reason
for the rising cost of his ventures was the necessity of suppressing the unending conflict
between the tribes of Gaul and Germania. Then Rome fell late in the 5th century when
Gaul was evolving into France, having chosen Clovis as Monarch in 501 AD.
Not so w/Germania, which remained a series of provinces till 1870, some 14 centuries later.
Over that time, the French did whatever and whenever they pleased to the Germans.
Then that dynamic changed dramatically as a result of the Franco-Prussian War and its
architects, Otto von Bismarck, the the creator of a unified Germany, as well as it's military
genius, Gerd von Moltke who crushed the French in a matter of months in 1871.
The French were apoplectic, stunned and seething for revenge but it was not to be as the
torch of European power had passed which they refused to accept or even recognize.
The seeds of the Great War were sewn in the time of Julius Caesar and came to pass in 1914.