what aid the Kaiser would give and how far he would guarantee the independence of South Africa.  The reply came:  “I will not only acknowledge the independence of South Africa, but I will even guarantee it, provided the rebellion is started immediately[546].”  The reason for the delay is not known.  Probably on further inquiry it was found that the situation was not ready either in Europe or in South Africa.  But as to German preparations for a war with England both in South-West Africa and Egypt there can be no doubt.  India and probably Ireland also were not neglected.

[Footnote 546:  General Botha’s speech at Cape Town, July 25, 1915.]

In fact a considerable part of the German people looked forward to a war with Great Britain as equally inevitable and desirable.  She was rich and pleasure-loving; her Government was apt to wait till public opinion had been decisively pronounced; her sons, too selfish to defend her, paid “mercenaries” to do it.  Her scattered possessions would therefore fall an easy prey to a well-organised, warlike, and thoroughly patriotic nation.  Let the world belong to the ablest race, the Germanic.  Such had been the teachings of Treitschke and his disciples long before the Boer War or the Anglo-French Entente.  Those events and the Morocco Question in 1905 and 1911 sharpened the rivalry; but it is a superficial reading of events to suppose that Morocco caused the rivalry, which clearly originated in the resolve of the Germans to possess a World-Empire.  So soon as their influential classes distinctly framed that resolve a conflict was inevitable with Great Britain, which blocked their way to the Ocean and possessed in every sea valuable colonies which she seemed little able to defend.  The Morocco affair annoyed them because, firstly, they wanted that strategic position, and secondly, they desired to sunder the Anglo-French Entente.  But Morocco was settled in 1911, and still the friction continued unabated.  There remained the Eastern Question, a far more serious affair; for on it hung the hopes of Germany in the Orient and of Austria in the Balkans.

The difficulty for Germany was, how to equate her world-wide ambitions with the restricted and diverse aims of Austria and Italy.  The interests of the two Central Empires harmonised only respecting the Eastern Question. Weltpolitik in general and Morocco in particular did not in the least concern Austria.  Further, the designs of Vienna and Rome on Albania clashed hopelessly.  An effort was made in the Triple Alliance, as renewed in 1912, to safeguard Italian interests by insisting that, if Austria gained ground in the Balkans, Italy should have “compensation.”  The effort to lure the Government of Rome into Balkan adventures prompted the Austrian offer of August 9, 1913, for joint action against Servia.  Italy refused, alleging that, as Servia was not guilty of aggression, the Austro-Italian Alliance did not hold good for such a venture.  Germany also refused the Austrian