This straight talk, coupled with the strenuous and insistent but vain exertions of the British Foreign Secretary to get first Austria and then Germany to stay their hand and accept full satisfaction and absolute guarantees from Servia, constitute the cardinal facts in the history of the origin of the present war. They furnish the measure of our peace efforts and of our self-containment. And they also reveal the two conspiring Powers working in secret concert, not, as was at first assumed, to remove the causes of the conflict, but to immobilize the Powers that were likely to take an active part in it. That is the clue to what seemed inexplicable in their fitful and apparently incongruous moves. Whenever Sir Edward Grey asked for an extension of time, for a Conference of the Powers, or for any other facilities for settling the Austro-Servian quarrel diplomatically, Germany and Austria were unable to comply with his request. Would Vienna consent to lengthen the time accorded to Servia for an answer? No, she was unable to do so. And in this Germany backed her up as behoves a brilliant second. Dealings with Belgrade, she held, must be effected expeditiously. And when Sir Edward Grey proposed to the German Government that the Servian reply might be used as a basis for conversations, the Imperial Chancellor _regrets_ that things have marched too rapidly! I was sent for again to-day by the Imperial Chancellor (writes Sir Edward Goschen), who told me that he regretted to state that the Austro-Hungarian Government, to whom he had at once communicated your opinion, had announced that _events had marched too rapidly_, and that it was therefore _too late_ to act upon your suggestion.[29] Thus having first fixed the time-limit at forty-eight hours and then refused to have it extended in order to allow time for a settlement, Germany expresses her regret that it is too late to act on the suggestion that a pause shall ensue to enable a peaceful arrangement to be arrived at. The cynicism embodied in this answer is curiously like the pleas for mercy addressed by a young murderer to the jury before the verdict was brought in. “I am an orphan,” he said, “and alone in a cold, unsympathetic world. I can look neither to a father nor a mother to advise, chide, or comfort me. May I hope that you at least will show me pity and mercy?” A touching appeal it might well seem until read in the light of the circumstance that he who made it was being tried for the murder of both his parents. With a prescience of the coming struggle which his own deliberate manœuvres were meant to bring about, the Chancellor displayed keen and, it was then believed, praiseworthy anxiety to impress our Government with the sincerity of his desire and the strenuousness of his efforts for peace.