Among more considerate men on both sides, the breakdown was frankly spoken of as one of the great calamities in our political history. It was more than that. It was in reality one of the greatest which have ever befallen Europe.
THE FOURTH WARNING
During the following July (1911), while in this country we were deeply engaged in the bitter climax of the constitutional struggle, there sounded a fourth strident warning from the gong of the German Chancellery.
The Agadir incident is one of the strangest which have occurred in British history during recent years. Its full gravity was not realised outside a very narrow circle at the time of its occurrence; and when subsequently it became more widely understood there was a curious conspiracy to hush it up—or, perhaps, not so much a conspiracy, as a general instinct of concealment—a spontaneous gesture of modesty—as if the British nation had been surprised bathing.
At the beginning of July the German cruiser Panther appeared at Agadir in Morocco. This visit was intended and understood as a direct challenge to France. Diplomacy was immediately in a stir.
Three weeks later Mr. Lloyd George spoke at the Mansion House, making it clear that England would not tolerate this encroachment. Even amid the anger and excitement which attended the last stages of the Parliament Bill, this statement created a deep impression throughout the country, and a still deeper impression in other countries.
Then the crisis appeared to fade away. Germany was supposed to have become amenable. We returned to our internecine avocations. The holiday season claimed its votaries, and a great railway strike upset many of their best-laid plans. The inhabitants of the United Kingdom are accustomed to think only on certain topics during August and September, and it is hard to break them of their habits. To reconsider a crisis which had arisen and passed away some two and a half months earlier, was more than could be expected of us when we returned to work in the autumn.
But Mr. Lloyd George's speech was capable of only one interpretation,—if Germany had persisted in her encroachment, this country would have gone to war in August or September 1911 in support of France. His words had no other meaning, and every highly placed soldier and sailor was fully aware of this fact, and made such preparations in his own sphere as the case required. But from what has transpired subsequently, it does not seem at all clear that more than two or three of the Cabinet in the least realised what was happening. Parliament did not understand the situation any more than the country did.
Later on, when people had time to concentrate their minds on such matters, there was a thrill of post-dated anxiety—a perturbation and disapproval; criticism upon various points; a transference of Mr. McKenna from the Admiralty to the Home Office, and of Mr. Churchill from the Home Office to the Admiralty. Indignant anti-militarists, supporters for the most part of the Government, allowed themselves to be mysteriously reduced to silence. Business men, who had been shocked when they learned the truth, suffered themselves to be persuaded that even the truth must be taken with a pinch of salt. There was, in fact, a sort of general agreement that it was better to leave the summer embers undisturbed, lest a greater conflagration might ensue. The attitude of the orthodox politician was that of a nervous person who, hearing, as he imagines, a burglar in his bedroom, feels happier and safer when he shuts his eyes and pulls the blankets over his head.
THE FIFTH WARNING