“When I first came to the Wilhelmstrasse I witnessed, without being able to raise any protests, the successive encroachments of France in Morocco, which assuredly were breaches of the Algeciras Act, a basic covenant for the relations of the great Powers with the Shereefian Empire. If the Republican Government had continued to show prudence and to advance at a leisurely pace, we should have been compelled to put up with its pretensions and to champ our bit in silence. At one time it would have pleaded the hostility of a village which formed an important strategical point as an excuse for a military occupation; at another time it would have alleged the vagueness of the geographical boundaries marked out on the map as a pretext for going beyond them. The invasion would have crept on slowly, like a sheet of oil. I thanked Heaven” (here he gave his malicious little smile) “when I learnt of the march on Fez, a flagrant violation of the Algeciras Act. “This drastic proceeding, which the position of Europeans in the Moroccan capital did not justify, restored to us our freedom of action. Still, we were unwilling to move without making a last effort to arrive at an understanding. To the dispatch notifying the Imperial Government I replied with a simple acknowledgment of receipt. A little later on, however, at Kissingen, where M. Cambon had come to pay me a visit, I spoke for the first time of Germany’s claim to a compensation. We admitted that it was out of the question to make France draw back and conform to the Algeciras treaty. We consented to give up Morocco to her, on certain conditions, but we demanded in return a cession of territory in Africa. “Since this friendly conversation led to no result, just as our proposals, in accordance with the 1909 agreement, for a joint working of economic enterprises in Morocco by our respective nationals met with no direct answer from Paris, we decided to send the _Panther_ to Agadir. “By this action we made it clear to France that we regarded the Algeciras compact—which she had been the first to evade—as no longer binding. Germany, having protégés in the south of Morocco, wished henceforth to assume the right of protecting them. Still, she was perfectly willing, in the meantime, to converse with France and to settle, once for all, the terms on which the French suzerainty over the Shereefian Empire should be recognized. “All this was fully realized by M. Cambon,” Herr von Kiderlen-Wächter went on, adding a high tribute of praise to the Republican envoy. “Unfortunately, the various projects for an agreement, after being drawn up in Berlin, were always recast at the Quai d’Orsay. That is why the diplomatic conversations, instead of lasting a fortnight, dragged on for four months—a delay that unsettled the public mind and gave rise to a dangerous Press campaign in both countries.”