The wheels of the chariot of empire were greased and it was ready to start on its course of conquest when, early in 1905, a monkey-wrench was suddenly tossed into the machinery by a gentleman now known as Mr. William Hohenzollern. Germany had viewed with jealous eyes the growing influence of France in Europe, had seen herself threatened with political isolation by the _rapprochement_ between France and England, but she had bided her time until the disasters suffered on the battle-fields of Manchuria by France’s Russian ally had, by removing the threat of a Muscovite attack from the rear, led the statesmen of the Wilhelmstrasse to believe that the hour had struck for Germany to proclaim herself the arbiter of European affairs. The Moroccan situation provided them with the pretext that they needed. Here was Germany’s opportunity to gain “a place in the sun.” A firm of German bankers, the Mannesmann Brothers, had obtained from the sultan mining concessions in the Sus, and to “protect” them a German gunboat, the _Panther_, was rushed to Agadir. Shortly before this the imperial yacht _Hohenzollern_ had dropped anchor in the roadstead of Tangier, and the German emperor—“Hadji Guillaume,” as his Turkish friends flatteringly called him—had gone ashore for a conference with the representatives of the sultan, assuring them that Germany would insist on the maintenance of Morocco’s integrity and on the equality of European economic and commercial interests in that empire. Germany’s solicitude for Morocco was, of course, only a pretext to embarrass France, but it served its purpose, for Abd-el-Aziz, who had all along protested the right of France to interfere in Moroccan affairs, was emboldened to reject the scheme of reforms suggested by the French government and at the suggestion of the kaiser invited all the powers to advise him as to the needed improvements in his administration. To this the French foreign minister, M. Delcassé, strenuously objected, but the German chancellor, Prince von Bülow, used such threatening language that Delcassé resigned from office in order not to plunge his country into war.