on being consulted. There was for a time a real
danger of war. In the end peace was maintained by the cession by France
of considerable areas in the Congo as the price of German abstention
from intervening in a sphere where she had no right to intervene. But
Morocco was left under a definite French protectorate.

We have dwelt upon the Morocco question at some length, partly because
it attracted a vast amount of interest during the years of preparation
for the war; partly because it affords an extraordinarily good
illustration of the difficulty of maintaining peaceable relations with
Germany, and of the spirit in which Germany approached the delicate
questions of inter-imperial relationships--a spirit far removed indeed
from that friendly willingness for compromise and co-operation by which
alone the peace of the world could be maintained; and partly because it
illustrates the crudity and brutality of the methods by which Germany
endeavoured to separate her intended victims. It is improbable that she
ever meant to go to war on the Moroccan question. She meant to go to
war on whatever pretext might present itself when all her preparations
were ready; but in the meanwhile she would avoid war on all questions
but one: and that one was the great Berlin-Bagdad project, the keystone
of her soaring arch of Empire. She would fight to prevent the ruin of
that scheme. Otherwise she would preserve the peace, she would even
make concessions to preserve the peace, until the right moment had
come. In that sense Germany was a peace-loving power: in that sense
alone.

On the agreement between Russia and Britain in 1907 it is unnecessary
to dwell with such fulness. The agreement turned mainly upon the
removal of causes of friction in the Middle East--in Persia and the
Persian Gulf, and in Tibet. These were in themselves interesting and
thorny questions, especially the question of Persia, where the two
powers established distinct spheres of interest and a sort of joint
protectorate. But they need not detain us, because they had no direct
bearing upon the events leading up to the war, except in so far as, by
removing friction between two rivals of long standing, they made it
possible for them to co-operate for their common defence against a
menace that became more and more apparent.

From 1907 onwards Germany found herself confronted by united defensive
action on the part of the three empires whose downfall she intended to
compass. It