NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION
It has been stated, apparently on good authority, that the informal conversations which went on during the Congress of Berlin between the plenipotentiaries of the Powers (see ante, p. 328) furnished Italy with an assurance that, in the event of France expanding in North Africa, Italy should find "compensation" in Tripoli. Apparently this explains her recent action there (October 1911).
FOOTNOTES:
[242] In his speech of February 19, 1878, Bismarck said, "The liaison of the three Emperors, which is habitually designated an alliance, rests on no written agreement and does not compel any one of the three Emperors to submit to the decisions of the two others."
[243] Débidour, Histoire diplomatique de l'Europe, vol. ii. pp. 458-59; Bismarck, Reflections and Reminiscences, vol. ii. ch. xxix.
[244] The Emperor Alexander II.: His Life and Reign, by S.S. Tatischeff (St. Petersburg, 1903), Appendix to vol. ii.
[245] De Blowitz, Memoirs, ch. v.; An Ambassador of the Vanquished (ed. by the Duc de Broglie), pp. 180 et seq. Probably the article "Krieg in Sicht," published in the Berlin Post of April 15, 1875, was "inspired."
[246] Bismarck: his Reflections, etc., vol. ii. pp. 191-193, 249-153 (Eng. ed.); the Bismarck Jahrbuch, vol. iv. p. 35.
[247] Sir M. Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1886-88, vol. i. p. 129. See, too, other proofs of the probability of an attack by Germany on France in Professor Geffcken's Frankreich, Russland, und der Dreibund, pp. 90 et seq.
[248] Histoire de l'Entente franco-russe, by Élie de Cyon, ch. i. (1895).