The bid for British neutrality was the culminating phase of this unique diplomatic campaign. It was proffered with an intensity of emotion, a high-pitched feeling for the weal of the British nation, and a biblical solemnity which must, it was felt, tell with especial force with a people whose character so often merges in temperament and whose policy is always suffused with morality. Every consideration to which the Foreign Secretary, his colleagues, their parliamentary supporters, and the nation were thought to be impressible was singled out and emphasized. The smooth-tongued tempter at first, sure of his prey, approached the Liberal and pacific Cabinet through our political interests, elementary feelings, and national prejudices, winnowed by religious sentiment and passionate sincerity. With a penetrative intuition which would have proved unerring had it been guided by any of the lofty sentiments which it presupposed in its intended victim, they appealed to our loathing for crime, our hatred of oriental despotism, our indifference to Slav strivings, our aversion to the horrors of war, our love of peace, our anxiety to come to a permanent understanding with Germany, and by our attachment to all these boons of a highly cultured people they adjured us to hold aloof from the war and connive at their disregard of a treaty which they would have been delighted to respect had not brutal necessity compelled them to ignore it. But even this hard stroke of Fate--hard for them as for the Belgians--they would deaden to the best of their power by recognizing Belgium’s integrity anew at the end of the war. It was at this end of the cleverly fashioned disguise that the cloven hoof protruded. It is worth recalling that on the very day[31] on which the German Ambassador, acting on the instructions of his Chief, told Sir Edward Grey that the Chancellor was endeavouring to mediate between Vienna and St. Petersburg, “and he hopes (the Chancellor) with good success,” that same Chancellor, with that foreknowledge which is the sole privilege of the author of a movement, was cautiously preparing the scene for the next act on which he himself was soon to raise the curtain.