[518] Tardieu, La Conference d'Algeciras, pp. 410-20.
[519] See the cynical section in Reventlow, op. cit. (pp. 280-8), entitled "Utopien und Intrigen im Haag." For Austria's efforts to prevent the Anglo-Russian Entente, see H.W. Steed, The Hamburg Monarchy, p. 230.
[520] Rachfahl (p. 307) admits this, but accuses England of covert opposition everywhere, even at the Hague Conference.
[521] On December 24, 1908, the Russian Foreign Minister, Izvolsky, assured the Duma that "no open or secret agreements directed against German interests existed between Russia and England."
[522] Bismarck, his Reflections and Recollections, vol. ii. pp. 252, 289. There are grounds for thinking that William II. has been pushed on to a bellicose policy by the Navy, Colonial, and Pan-German Leagues. In 1908 he seems to have sought to pause; but powerful influences (as also at the time of the crises of July 1911 and 1914) propelled him. See an article in the Revue de Paris of April 15, 1913, "Guillaume II et les pangermanistes." In my narrative I speak of the Kaiser as equivalent to the German Government; for he is absolute and his Ministers are responsible solely to him.
CHAPTER XXII
TEUTON versus SLAV (1908-13)
"To tell the truth, the Slav seems to us a born slave."--TREITSCHKE, June 1876.