that Austria is the aggressor.  France comes in on the side of Russia.  And England?  Will she admit that the war was ‘unprovoked’ and remain neutral?  Hardly, we think!” The Chancellor thereupon proposes the addition:  “England, of course, will remain neutral if war is forced upon Germany?  That follows, I presume?” “No!” from the British Foreign Office.  Reason as before.  And the negotiations fall through.  How should they not under the conditions?  There could be no understanding, because there was no confidence.  There could be no confidence because there was mutual fear.  There was mutual fear because the Triple Alliance stood in arms against the Triple Entente.  What was wrong?  Germany?  England?  No.  The European tradition and system.

The fact, then, that those negotiations broke down is no more evidence of sinister intentions on the part of Germany than it is on the part of Great Britain.  Baron Beyens, to my mind the most competent and the most impartial, as well as one of the best-informed, of those who have written on the events leading up to the war, says explicitly of the policy of the German Chancellor:—­

A practicable rapprochement between his country and Great Britain was the dream with which M. de Bethmann-Hollweg most willingly soothed himself, without the treacherous arriere-pensee which the Prince von Buelow perhaps would have had of finishing later on, at an opportune moment, with the British Navy.  Nothing authorizes us to believe that there was not a basis of sincerity in the language of M. de Jagow when he expressed to Sir E. Goschen in the course of their last painful interview his poignant regret at the crumbling of his entire policy and that of the Chancellor, which had been to make friends with Great Britain, and then through Great Britain to get closer to France.[1]

Meantime the considerations I have here laid before the reader, in relation to this general question of Anglo-German rivalry, are, I submit, all relevant, and must be taken into fair consideration in forming a judgment.  The facts show clearly that Germany was challenging as well as she could the British supremacy at sea; that she was determined to become a naval as well as a military Power; and that her policy was, on the face of it, a menace to this country; just as the creation on our part of a great conscript army would have been taken by Germany as a menace to her.  The British Government was bound to make counter-preparations.  I, for my own part, have never disputed it.  I have never thought, and do not now think, that while the European anarchy continues, a single Power can disarm in the face of the others.  All this is beyond dispute.  What is disputable, and a matter of speculative inference, is the further assumption that in pursuing this policy Germany was making a bid to destroy the British Empire.  The facts can certainly be accounted for without that assumption.  I myself think the assumption highly improbable.  So much I may say, but I cannot say more.  Possibly some day we may be able to check conjecture by facts.  Until then, argument must be inconclusive.