Meanwhile the remaining Great Powers of Europe had continued, as Prince Bismarck hoped, to pursue their separate paths, though England was on friendly terms with France and had, equally with Russia, laboured to avert a second Franco-German War in 1875.  After 1882 the English occupation of Egypt constituted for some years a standing grievance in the eyes of France.  The persistent advance of Russia in Asia had in like manner been a source of growing apprehension to England since 1868; and, for a long time after the Treaty of Berlin, English statesmen were on the watch to check the growth of Russian influence in the Balkans.  But common interests of very different kinds were tending to unite these three Powers, not in any stable alliance, even for mutual defence, but in a string of compacts concluded for particular objects.

One of these interests was connected with a feeling that the policy of the principal partners in the Triple Alliance, particularly that of Germany, had become incalculable and was only consistent in periodic outbursts of self-assertiveness, behind which could be discerned a steady determination to accumulate armaments which should be strong enough to intimidate any possible competitor.  The growth of this feeling dates from the dismissal of Prince Bismarck by the present Kaiser.  Bismarck had sedulously courted the friendship of Russia, even after 1882.  He entered in fact into a defensive agreement with Russia against Austria.  While he increased the war strength of the army, he openly announced that Germany would always stand on the defensive; and he addressed a warning to the Reichstag against the ‘offensive-defensive’ policy which was even then in the air, though it was still far from its triumph:—­

’If I were to say to you, “We are threatened by France and Russia; it is better for us to fight at once; an offensive war is more advantageous to us,” and ask for a credit of a hundred millions, I do not know whether you would grant it—­I hope not.’[10]

But Bismarck’s retirement (1890) left the conduct of German policy in less cautious hands.  The defensive alliance with Russia was allowed to lapse; friction between the two Powers increased, and as the result Germany found herself confronted with the Dual Alliance of France and Russia, which gradually developed, during the years 1891-6, from a friendly understanding into a formal contract for mutual defence.  There is no doubt that this alliance afforded France a protection against that unprovoked attack upon her eastern frontier which she has never ceased to dread since 1875; and it has yet to be proved that she ever abused the new strength which this alliance gave her.