The motives for Germany’s interference are well-known. She could not allow the solidity of the Triplice to be shaken. She owed a debt of gratitude to her ally, who had not withheld her support at the Algeciras Conference. Finally, since she fancied that England, Russia, and France were attempting to encircle her, she was anxious to prove that the mere gesture of putting her hand to her sword would be enough to dispel the illusions of her foes. The machinations of Paris and London would break down, she thought, at the touch of reality, at the collision with German military power. The risk of war, whatever may have been said at the time, was not very great. Herr von Kiderlen-Wächter, who, as I have already said, was not at heart a fighter, though he humoured the Emperor’s newly-acquired taste for warlike phrases in diplomatic conversations, had seen this clearly enough. Russia had not yet recovered from the wounds inflicted on her by the struggle with Japan and by the revolutionary outbreaks to which that struggle gave rise. In France, the national sentiment, which had scarcely yet rallied from the shocks of the Moroccan disputes, was not likely to be roused by the call of Serbian aspirations. In London, it is true, the Government and public opinion had roundly condemned the infringement of the Treaty of Berlin by Austrian diplomacy. But it is a long way from an academic reproof to an effective intervention. Yet the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the pressure brought to bear by the Count de Pourtalès at St. Petersburg had far more serious results than had been anticipated at Berlin. These moves exercised a far-reaching influence on all the later conduct of the Tsar’s Government, and their rebound could be clearly traced in the rigid attitude shown by that Government when a new Austro-Serbian conflict came to trouble the peace of Europe. The crisis of 1909 enabled Russia to realize the full value of M. Isvolsky’s skill and foresight, in that he had managed, since 1907, to draw her close both to her recent enemy in the Far East and to her age-long rival in Central Asia. But for the agreements formed by this statesman with Japan and England, the alliances of to-day would have been impossible. Another outcome of the 1909 crisis was that of revealing to the Slav Empire the need for being armed to the teeth against its arrogant neighbour, and thus of hastening on its military reorganization. If the Emperor William and his advisers had not had such short memories, they would have been less astonished than they seemed to be afterwards at the rapid progress of Russia’s armaments.