Up to the last moment the Emperor counted on the neutrality of England, whatever might be the cause of the struggle between the Triple and the Dual Alliance. He had too readily forgotten all the grievances that the United Kingdom had against him, although they had not vanished from the memories or the hearts of Britons: the famous telegram to President Kruger in 1896, in connection with the Jameson Raid, an ill-timed manifesto, which completely deceived the old patriot of Johannesburg as to the likelihood of support from the Kaiser; the campaign of slander against England carried on in Germany from the outset of the Boer War, three years later; and, last but not least, the tremendous expansion of the German navy, heralded by Prince von Bülow and Admiral von Tirpitz immediately after the first British reverses at the hands of the Boers. Had William II. also forgotten the resolutely hostile front shown by the British Cabinet during the Algeciras Conference, and, more recently, during the Franco-German negotiations after the Agadir affair? No doubt he fancied, like many Germans, that the support given by England to France would not go beyond certain moral and geographical limits. He felt that it would be enough to pave the way for a solution of the Moroccan problem (since it had been decided in London to help in setting up a French protectorate in Morocco), and of certain Mediterranean questions in which the two countries held similar views. It was generally believed in Germany that the Cabinet of St. James’s, realizing the frankly pacific outlook of its Liberal majority in Parliament, would remain a patient spectator in a Continental war that did not involve any vital British interests. How often did the Berlin Press dwell on this theme, and, during the brief Austro-Serbian crisis preceding the war, embroider it with fulsome flatteries of Great Britain! There was high financial authority to support this conviction among the German public. These potentates of the purse carried on their intrigues in London up to the very end, not only in the business world but even in political circles. In the parliamentary lobbies at Westminster, financiers of German origin took steps with a view to preventing any participation by England in a Continental struggle. Shortly before the outbreak of hostilities, Herr Ballin, the Kaiser’s confidential servant, came to London with orders from his master to make all his arrangements for war and to hoodwink his English friends into the belief that Germany’s intentions were peaceful, when in point of fact all was ready for hurling the thunderbolt.