overnment not to provoke a conflict. In fact, this question is hardly
worth discussing. Once more we must repeat that, in the plans of William
II and his generals, the Serbian affair was a snare spread for the
Northern Empire before the growth of its military power should have made
it an invincible foe.

[Sidenote: Uncertainty regarding Britain.]

[Sidenote: England's attitude.]

There is no gainsaying that uncertainty as to Britain's intervention was
one of the factors that encouraged Germany. We often asked ourselves
anxiously at Berlin whether Germany's hand would not have been stayed
altogether if the British Government had formally declared that it would
not hold aloof from the war. We even hoped, for a brief moment, that Sir
Edward Grey would destroy the illusions on which the German people loved
to batten. The British Foreign Secretary did indeed observe to Prince
Lichnowsky on July 29th that the Austro-Serbian issue might become so
great as to involve all European interests, and that he did not wish the
Ambassador to be misled by the friendly tone of their conversations into
thinking that Britain would stand aside. If at the beginning she had
openly taken her stand by the side of her Allies, she might, to be sure,
have checked the fatal march of events. This, at any rate, is the most
widespread view, for a maritime war certainly did not enter into the
calculations of the Emperor and Admiral von Tirpitz, while it was the
nightmare of the German commercial world. In my opinion, however, an
outspoken threat from England on the 29th, a sudden roar of the British
lion, would not have made William II draw back. The memory of Agadir
still rankled in the proud Germanic soul. The Emperor would have risked
losing all prestige in the eyes of a certain element among his subjects
if at the bidding of the Anglo-Saxon he had refused to go further, and
had thus played into the hands of those who charged him with conducting
a policy of mere bluff and intimidation. "Germany barks but does not
bite" was a current saying abroad, and this naturally tended to
exasperate her. An ominous warning from the lips of Sir Edward Grey
would only have served to precipitate the onslaught of the Kaiser's
armies, in order that the intervention of the British fleet might have
no influence on the result of the campaign, the rapid and decisive
campaign planned at Berlin.

[Sidenote: British opinion.]

We know, moreover, from the telegrams and s