That this theory is erroneous I know on the highest authority. Having watched, sometimes at close quarters, the birth, growth, cultivation, and ripening of the scheme which has now borne fruit in the bitterest and most tremendous war on record, and having had more than once some of the decisive State papers under my eyes, I can affirm that Germany’s hope and desire and striving were on the opposite side. She deprecated a European war sincerely. She sought to ward it off by every means compatible with the realization of her main scheme, and she was disappointed beyond words at her failure. Her main scheme was to deal with each of the Entente Powers separately, and to reserve Great Britain for the last. And it was presumably in furtherance of this programme that Admiral von Tirpitz tendered his advice to the Kaiser--as we are told he did--not to break with England yet, but to conciliate her by every available means, and thus to gain time for the German navy to reach the standard which would enable it to cope with ours. That the German scheme of separating the Entente Powers and crushing them one by one was feasible will hardly be denied. One has only to read the recent diplomatic correspondence on the crisis in the light of certain other data to realize how lucky the Entente Powers may account themselves at having been provoked one and all by Germany. Each Power felt strongly tempted to circumscribe its own interests to the narrowest limits, and to keep its powder dry until these were manifestly assailed. That was the temper of the Entente States. “In the present case,” Sir Edward Grey explained to the German Ambassador, “the dispute between Austria and Servia was not one in which we felt called to take a hand. Even if the question became one between Austria and Russia, we should not feel called upon to take a hand in it.” Clearly, then, Germany might tackle Russia without drawing Great Britain to the side of her enemy. But even “if Germany were involved,” the Foreign Secretary went on to say, “and France became involved, we had not made up our minds what we should do.” Consequently it might well seem no great feat of diplomacy for Germany to set inducements and deterrents before us sufficiently powerful to keep us neutral. In no case was the Prussian scheme of dealing separately with each Power chimerical.