We have dwelt upon the Morocco question at some length, partly because it attracted a vast amount of interest during the years of preparation for the war; partly because it affords an extraordinarily good illustration of the difficulty of maintaining peaceable relations with Germany, and of the spirit in which Germany approached the delicate questions of inter-imperial relationships—­a spirit far removed indeed from that friendly willingness for compromise and co-operation by which alone the peace of the world could be maintained; and partly because it illustrates the crudity and brutality of the methods by which Germany endeavoured to separate her intended victims.  It is improbable that she ever meant to go to war on the Moroccan question.  She meant to go to war on whatever pretext might present itself when all her preparations were ready; but in the meanwhile she would avoid war on all questions but one:  and that one was the great Berlin-Bagdad project, the keystone of her soaring arch of Empire.  She would fight to prevent the ruin of that scheme.  Otherwise she would preserve the peace, she would even make concessions to preserve the peace, until the right moment had come.  In that sense Germany was a peace-loving power:  in that sense alone.

On the agreement between Russia and Britain in 1907 it is unnecessary to dwell with such fulness.  The agreement turned mainly upon the removal of causes of friction in the Middle East—­ in Persia and the Persian Gulf, and in Tibet.  These were in themselves interesting and thorny questions, especially the question of Persia, where the two powers established distinct spheres of interest and a sort of joint protectorate.  But they need not detain us, because they had no direct bearing upon the events leading up to the war, except in so far as, by removing friction between two rivals of long standing, they made it possible for them to co-operate for their common defence against a menace that became more and more apparent.

From 1907 onwards Germany found herself confronted by united defensive action on the part of the three empires whose downfall she intended to compass.  It was not (except as regarded France and Russia) a formal alliance which bound these powers.  There was no fixed agreement between them as to military co-operation.  France and Britain had indeed, in 1906 and in 1911, consulted as to the military steps they should take if they were drawn into war, as seemed likely in those years, but neither was in any way bound to help the other under all circumstances.  France and Britain had also agreed that the French fleet should be concentrated in the Mediterranean, the main British fleet in the North Sea.  This arrangement (which was universally known, and, indeed, could not be concealed) put Britain under a moral obligation to defend France against naval attack, but only if France were the object of aggression.  It was, therefore, actually a safeguard of peace, since it ensured that neither France nor, consequently,