Towards the end of 1908, a more sober and rational policy began to prevail at the Wilhelmstrasse. The idea of French paramountcy in Morocco, which had seemed intolerable three years before, had gained some ground among the authorities at the Imperial Foreign Office. They were coming round to the view that it was an unavoidable sacrifice. In an exchange of communications between Herr von Kiderlen-Wächter, interim chief of the department, and M. Jules Cambon, the French ambassador, on February 9, 1909, the Imperial Government declared that the only aims it pursued in Morocco were economic, and recognized that the special political interests of France in Morocco were closely bound up with the establishment of law and order. Determined not to hamper these interests, it undertook to join hands with the Republican Government in an attempt to associate their respective subjects in enterprises of which the French might obtain the management. In this way Berlin, seeing that there was no hope of exercising a political influence in the Shereefian Empire, fell back upon the scheme of an economic exploitation, to be carried out in company with France. After the incidents of the preceding years, complicated by the unsettled state of Europe, no improvement was to be noted in Franco-German relations. Opinion in Paris, among the public no less than in Parliament, was largely adverse to any system of co-operation that would have looked like giving way to Germany. Moreover, the German Press had not retired from the fray; it continued to denounce, as violations of the Algeciras Act, every forward step taken by the French troops in Morocco. Under these circumstances, the French ministers did not consider it wise or opportune, at the moment, to encourage the proposals for associating the subjects of the two countries in the joint handling of economic enterprises. V.