[Footnote 497:  Delcasse was Foreign Minister in five Administrations until 1905.]

It has often been stated that the Kaiser desired to form a Coalition against Great Britain during the Boer War; and it is fairly certain that he sounded Russia and France with a view to joint diplomatic efforts to stop the war on the plea of humanity, and that, after the failure of this device, he secretly informed the British Government of the danger which he claimed to have averted[498].  His actions reflected the impulsiveness and impetuosity which have often puzzled his subjects and alarmed his neighbours; but it seems likely that his aims were limited either to squeezing the British at the time of their difficulties, or to finding means of breaking up the Franco-Russian alliance.  His energetic fishing in troubled waters caused much alarm; but it is improbable that he desired war with Great Britain until his new navy was ready for sea.  The German Chancellor, Prince von Buelow, has since written as follows:  “We gave England no cause to thwart us in the building of our fleet:  . . . we never came into actual conflict with the Dual Alliance, which would have hindered us in the gradual acquisition of a navy[499].”  This, doubtless, was the governing motive in German policy, to refrain from any action that would involve war, to seize every opportunity for pushing forward German claims, and, above all, to utilise the prevalent irritation at the helplessness of Germany at sea as a means of overcoming the still formidable opposition of German Liberals to the ever-increasing naval expenditure.

[Footnote 498:  Sir V. Chirol, Quarterly Review, Oct. 1914.]

[Footnote 499:  Buelow, Imperial Germany, pp. 98-9 (Eng. transl.); Rachfahl, Kaiser und Reich (p. 163), states that, as in 1900-1, the German fleet, even along with those of France and Russia, was no match for the British fleet, Germany necessarily remained neutral.  See, too, Hurd and Castle, German Sea Power, chap. v.]

In order to discourage the futile anti-British diatribes in the German Press, Buelow declared in the Reichstag that in no quarter was there an intention to intervene against England.  There are grounds for questioning the sincerity of this utterance; for the Russian statesman, Muraviev, certainly desired to intervene, as did influential groups at Petrograd, Berlin, and Paris.  In any case, the danger to Great Britain was acute enough to evoke help from all parts of the Empire, and implant the conviction of the need of closer union and of maintaining naval supremacy.  The risks of the years 1899-1902 also revealed the very grave danger of what had been termed “splendid isolation,” and aroused a desire for a friendly understanding with one or more Powers as occasion might offer.