There was much ill intention, it may be submitted; more ignorance; and bad faith most of all. Russia and Germany stood, like every autocracy, to gain by a successful blood-bath; the triumph of a "spirited foreign policy" deflected attention from domestic politics and strengthened the bonds of discipline. France nurtured a spirit of hatred and revenge against the power which had after many years curtailed her privilege of exploiting and disturbing the German states for her own profit; she hankered, also, to recover two provinces which had been torn from her side as ruthlessly as she had torn them from the side of another. So much for ill intention.
There was ignorance in the epidemic of international fear which arose and spread from the day in 1892 when Germany made overtures of friendship to Great Britain. Before the government of the day had time to promulgate its historic doctrine of insularity, France was overtaken by panic at the possibility of being encircled; to counter an Anglo-German alliance which never came to birth, she purchased the alliance of Russia by financing the trans-Siberian railway and acquired at second-hand an interest in the thieves' kitchen of south-east Europe and a responsibility for its periodical conflagration. It was now Germany's turn to suspect an encircling movement directed at her immense double frontier; the uneasy suspicion turned to active alarm when the pacific geniality of King Edward and the cautious diplomacy of Lord Lansdowne added the resources of the world's greatest naval power to those of the world's most numerous and of Europe's most scientific armies.
In such an atmosphere of suspicion, the "race of armaments" progressed apace and was fostered by an economic hallucination that, if Great Britain or Germany could destroy the other's trade, the survivor would be roughly twice as rich—with the embarrassing richness of a seller who brings his goods to a market where no one has anything to offer him in exchange. In brief sun-bursts of sanity, the manipulators of British foreign policy sickened of the suspicion-disease which themselves had spread; there were "peace talks" and peace missions: Mr. Churchill proposed a naval holiday; Lord Haldane visited Germany, flitting between Potsdam and Windsor, from one soveran to another, with a pregnant gravity and consequence that would have turned the head of a man less prone to personal vanity. By this time, unfortunately, the suspicion was too deep-seated to be charmed away by the bilingual fluency of a philosophic chancellor; the offer of a naval holiday, by a power which was already predominant at sea, suggested some kind of confidence trick; and the German government not only believed that an attack was impending, but knew well that, if the parts had been reversed, a boat-load of German Churchills and Haldanes would have been sent with messages of good-will to England. And no one outside the ranks of labour had proclaimed the simple doctrine that the Nürnberg toy-maker had no inherent, life-and-death quarrel with the toy-maker of Birmingham. So much for ignorance.
II
In England at least there was also bad faith.
A new chapter in British foreign policy began with the Anglo-French entente: designed originally to end a long period of friction in North Africa, it effectually ended the longer period of British isolation from continental politics. So successful was its work as an instrument of peace that a similar entente was established with Russia; and, as soon as London and Paris had disposed of North Africa, London and Petersburg turned their attention to unsettled problems in Persia. It was speciously claimed that the entente principle reduced the menace of war: henceforth all international differences could be accommodated by friendly chats between the foreign ministers of entente powers; if Germany would join the happy family, the menace of war would vanish.
Those who sincerely hoped to see growing from the first ententean informal United States of Europe revealed one blind spot in their imagination. The object of war, seen from one angle, is to upset the existing order in the interests of one belligerent; the object of the entente was to preserve the existing order; but, though this brought substantial advantage to Great Britain, France and Russia by putting North Africa and Persia out of bounds for diplomatic skirmishing, it brought no corresponding advantage to a country which joined the entente after the spoils had been divided. "You have helped yourselves," the German imperialist might fairly say; "you not only refuse to let me participate, but you wish me to guarantee you in permanent possession." The German government refused to recognise the right of three nations to distribute among themselves the unallocated territories of the world; it presumed, further, to doubt their power; and the Agadir episode was an experiment to test the strength of the entente. A mailed fist and shining armour had prevailed against Russia when Bosnia and Herzegovina were annexed; they were worth trying again.
The international crisis of 1911 proved that, on this occasion and on this subject, Great Britain and France were not to be intimidated; here, at least, the entente was impregnable. Would it always be as solid? Throughout Europe, after 1911, the dominating question in foreign politics was whether the diplomacy of Great Britain and of France could always count on the armed backing of the other. Was there an offensive and defensive alliance? In the absence of an alliance, was there a binding obligation on either power to come to the assistance of the other?
The question was asked in the House of Commons: