Kinderlen-Waechter and Moritz were deep in the Balkan question, and I sensed then the coming Balkan imbroglio.
"Without doubt," Moritz said, "we will bring that to an issue within a few months." I knew he meant that Austria would precipitate the Balkan question. Kinderlen-Waechter was serious.
"It has got to be done."
There were other snatches, all bearing on the same subject, and gradually the situation began to clarify in my mind. It was not, however, until I had noted the contents of certain documents before destroying them that the tremendous importance of the big stakes they were all playing for became apparent. What I shall now do is to reveal the substance of these documents, coupling them with overheard conversation, thus interpreting the full significance of the conference.
Within the last twenty-five years Germany has so enormously advanced in commerce that she urgently needs some further outlet on a northern seacoast. This means Holland and Belgium. Hamburg and Bremen are the only two practical harbors that Germany possesses for the distribution of her enormous export. The congestion in both places is such that steamers wait for weeks to load. One-quarter of Germany's exports goes through Antwerp. Germany must have Antwerp. Practically the whole of southern Germany's commerce, especially along the Rhine and the highway of the Rhine, pours into a foreign country at present. Germany must have Antwerp--in fact, the whole coast, Amsterdam and Rotterdam included.
The empire wants harbors, not colonies. The colonizing idea is a fallacy. Germany is, first and last, a manufacturing country. It never was and never will be, for a long time to come, a successful colonizer. At present all that Germany wants is markets, and facilities for extending her markets. These markets Germany will always be able to command because of her intense scientific application to all branches of manufacture. But these products need outlets. Germany is quite willing to let the others colonize so long as she has a chance to get her goods in. So much for the German situation.
England, in her vast oversea domains and possessions, wants rounding up. England has not been able in the past, and certainly is not at present able, to supply herself and her colonies. In Germany she has a first-class workman. Germany manufactures what England needs. Germany's building of her navy was never meant as a real menace to Great Britain. It was solely a means to impress the English that Germany would make a powerful and valuable ally in every shape and form. Conversely, it was a threat that she would be a dangerous opponent. This is clearly understood in the English and German Cabinets. Public opinion is being rapidly educated up to this in both countries. All the war-scare talk between Germany and England has been and is only a means to an end. The end is to throw dust in the eyes of the rest of the world. Germany and England will never willingly war. Destruction of one would mean the destruction of the other. They are too equally powerful to be able to fight each other; their real interests run too close together. Indeed, they are mutual. Germany manufactures, England uses. Only a miracle would separate them.
Shoulder to shoulder, Germany and England (Germany, of course, including Austria, and possibly Italy) could dictate to the rest of the world. There is one stumbling-block. This is France.
Well-informed Frenchmen have known and feared this for a long time. They have, of course, never mentioned it in public. Shrewd French statesmen have long kept it in the seclusion of their own minds. It would be political and possibly physical death openly to assert that France is doomed. But doomed she is.
With all her gallantry, hysterical patriotism, and wealth, she would never be able to hold out against Germany alone. Her attempts at alliances have been frenzied. To secure Russia's friendship she has loaned enormous sums of money. But the Japanese war and internal troubles have eliminated Russia as a high-class ally. She was at the time of the Black Forest conference but a secondary power. She is to-day balanced by Turkey and Austria. The Balkan States are smashed. So France did her utmost to solidify the entente cordiale fostered by the late King Edward VII under the stress of public opinion in England.