against them was
their enterprise--commercial jealousy."

On the other hand, the head of a large warehouse told me only a few days
later that when travelling in Germany for his firm some fifteen years
ago he had a conversation with a German, in the course of which he (the
Englishman) said: "I find your people so obliging and friendly that I
think surely whatever little differences there are between us as nations
will be dispelled by closer intercourse, and so all danger of war will
pass away." "No," replied the German, "you are quite mistaken. You and I
are friendly; but that is only as individuals. As nations we shall never
rest till we have war. The English nation may well be contented because
they have already _got_ all the good things of the Earth--their trade,
their ports, their colonies; but Germany will not allow this to go on
for ever. She will fight for her rightful position in the world; she
will challenge England's mercantile supremacy. She will have to do so,
and she will not fail."[16]

Thus the plot thickened; the entanglement increased. The Boer War roused
ill-feeling between England and Germany. The German Navy Bill followed
in 1900, and the Kaiser announced his intention of creating a sea-power
the equal of any in the world. Britain of course replied with her Navy
Bills; and the two countries were committed to a mad race of armaments.
The whole of Europe stood by anxious. Fear and Greed, the two meanest of
human passions, ruled everywhere. Fear of a militarist Germany began to
loom large upon the more pacific States of Europe. On the other hand,
the fatality of Alsace-Lorraine loomed in Germany, full of forebodings
of revenge. France had found a friend in Russia--a sinister alliance.
Britain, convinced that trouble was at hand, came to an understanding
with France in 1904 and with Russia in 1907. The Triple Entente was born
as a set-off against the Triple Alliance. The Agadir incident in 1911
betrayed the purely commercial nature of the designs of the four Powers
concerned--France, Spain, England, and Germany--and a war over the
corpse of Morocco was only narrowly avoided. Germany felt quite
naturally that she was the victim of a plot, and thenceforth was
alternately convulsed by mad Ambition and haunted by a lurking Terror.

And now we come to the last act of the great drama. So far the
relations of Germany with Russia had not been strained. If there was any
fear of Russia, it was quite in the backgr