ucted and impartial student
will accept what appears to be the current English view, that the action
of Germany in this episode was a piece of sheer aggression without excuse,
and that the other Powers were acting throughout justly, honestly, and
straightforwardly.

The Morocco crisis, as we have already seen, produced in Germany a painful
impression, and strengthened there the elements making for war. Thus Baron
Beyens writes:--

The Moroccan conflicts made many Germans hitherto pacific regard another
war as a necessary evil.[4]

And again:--

The pacific settlement of the conflict of 1911 gave a violent impulse to
the war party in Germany, to the propaganda of the League of Defence and
the Navy League, and a greater force to their demands. To their dreams
of hegemony and domination the desire for revenge against France now
mingled its bitterness. A diplomatic success secured in an underground
struggle signified nothing. War, war in the open, that alone, in the eyes
of this rancorous tribe, could settle definitely the Moroccan question by
incorporating Morocco and all French Africa in the colonial empire they
hoped to create on the shores of the Mediterranean and in the heart of
the Black Continent.[5]

This we may take to be a correct description of the attitude of the
Pangermans. But there is no evidence that it was that of the nation.
We have seen also that Baron Beyens' impression of the attitude of the
German people, even after the Moroccan affair, was of a general desire
for peace.[6] The crisis had been severe, but it had been tided over, and
the Governments seem to have made renewed efforts to come into friendly
relations. In this connection the following dispatch of Baron Beyens (June
1912) is worth quoting:--

After the death of Edward VII, the Kaiser, as well as the Crown Prince,
when they returned from England, where they had been courteously
received, were persuaded that the coldness in the relations of the
preceding years was going to yield to a cordial intimacy between the
two Courts and that the causes of the misunderstanding between the two
peoples would vanish with the past. His disillusionment, therefore, was
cruel when he saw the Cabinet of London range itself last year on the
side of France. But the Kaiser is obstinate, and has not abandoned the
hope of reconquering the confidence of the English.[7]

This dispatch is so far borne out by the facts th