191 3] King Wilhelm's Feeling for England 417 



to any new rebuff, such as he had sustained at Agadir, but it was cer- 

 tainly no part of his plan to have England on his hands again as well as 

 France and Russia. It is altogether improbable that he was seeking a 

 quarrel just then with us, whatever he might dream as to an eventual 

 trial of strength with us at sea. 



It is, I believe, quite a mistake to suppose Kaiser Wilhelm otherwise 

 than personally well inclined to England. He liked English society, 

 and his summer visits to Cowes more than anything he could find on 

 the Continent, and he enjoyed being adulated by our aristocracy. He 

 had far rather have had England with him than against him; but he 

 resented our Foreign Office having allied itself with his two most 

 dangerous enemies, Russia on his eastern, France on his western, 

 frontier. Nor, in my opinion, was the resentment unjustified. Our 

 policy of helping the Russian Czar financially after his defeat by the 

 Japanese, and so enabling the Czar to renew his military strength, 

 seemed to Wilhelm a gratuitous menace as obliging him to increase his 

 own army on that side, while our Entente about Persia seemed a 

 menace to the development of his commercial plans connected with the 

 Bagdad railway. Nor, doubtless, was it unknown to him that part of 

 our plan was that Russia should be put in possession of Constantinople, 

 and thus permanently block for Germany her trade route eastwards. 

 All this added to our support of France in Morocco, was resented at 

 Berlin, and as I have said, not without reasonable cause. 



This, however, is not the same thing as saying that a war between 

 England and Germany was inevitable sooner or later through the 

 Kaiser Wilhelm's designs against us. I am convinced that even so 

 late as June 1913 not only our own peace, but the peace of Europe 

 might have been saved for an undefined period had we then found a 

 statesman at the Foreign Office possessed as Grey was of the ear of the 

 House of Commons, but with better knowledge of Europe and of the 

 true needs of our Eastern Empire, and with the courage of acting on 

 his knowledge. Such a one might have insisted on a withdrawal from 

 the false position we had taken in Egypt and at Constantinople through 

 our ill-omened Ententes with France and Russia, chief enemies, both 

 of them, of Germany, and also of that Mohammedan world with which 

 we were so closely connected in India, and so have averted all that 

 happened to ourselves and others. The gain, if it had only been of a 

 few years longer peace between France and Germany, would have 

 given time for the socialistic forces in either country to gather strength, 

 and if it had been openly known that England would take no part in 

 it, France certainly would not have invited war for Alsace-Lorraine or 

 given that excuse to Germany by making Russia's quarrel with Austria 

 her own over so small a wrong as Servia's. 



For, be it understood, the Great War which has destroyed all Europe 



