ted by England in the occupation of Morocco. This was done behind
the back of Germany to the manifest loss of Germany's colonial ambition
and, what is more noticeable, England was openly paying a very high
price for the new state of affairs she hoped to create, for she had
pretty well a free hand in Egypt, already, while France's opportunity of
going to Morocco and exploiting a very large area of valuable
territory--something quite new and additional to her--depended upon
England's withdrawing her opposition.

That opposition was withdrawn; and though the most violent effect was
produced in Germany, though there were threats of war, pitiable quarrels
within the French Cabinet and a moment of grave danger, the pact was
accomplished, and Morocco, all save the strip opposite Gibraltar, became
French, while all that Germany had to show for her share was an
irregularly shaped and not valuable couple of slices cut out of tropical
Africa in the Congo Basin from the vast French possessions there, and
added to her own still insufficient share.

Another group of arrangements was that with Russia, and here again
England willingly paid a heavy price, and again completely reversed her
traditional policy. She gave all that is vital in Persia to Russian
control. She forgot her old anxiety about the Indian frontier; she lost
her old and hitherto unbroken policy of supporting Turkey in Europe.
When the war came she was with the French in supporting the Balkan
powers, "The Little Nations."

Finally, in the matter of Italy, she supported or permitted the Italian
attack upon and annexation of Turkish territory in North Africa, and
consistently, before and after that event, worked for the strengthening
of Italy in the Triple Alliance and for securing the neutrality of that
country, at least in case of a European war.

There were many other arrangements besides these three principal and
typical ones, but all, small or great, were based upon the same idea,
and pointed in the same direction. England was leaning upon the Russian
side against Germany. The most important in the minor details in this
new policy, the one which has had most effect perhaps in producing the
war, was an understanding whereby the French fleet should virtually
evacuate the Northern Seas and undertake for England the policing of the
Mediterranean trade routes, and the guardianship of that source of food
supply to Great Britain, thus leaving the whole weight of the Brit