The external activities of Europe, noted a dozen years ago and before, have now to a certain extent been again superseded by rivalries within Europe itself. Those rivalries, however, are the result of their previous external activities, and in the last analysis they depend upon German commercial development. This has stimulated the German Empire to a prodigious naval programme, which affects the whole of Europe and may affect the United States. In 1897 I summed up two conspicuous European conditions as being the equilibrium then existing between France and Germany, with their respective allies, and the withdrawal of Great Britain from active association with the affairs of the Continent. At that date the Triple Alliance, Austria, Germany, Italy, stood against the Dual Alliance, France and Russia; Great Britain apart from both, but with elements of antagonism against Russia and France, and not against the German monarchies or Italy. These antagonisms arose wholly from conditions external to Europe,—in India against Russia, and in Africa against France. Later, the paralysis of Russia, through her defeat by Japan, and through her internal troubles, left France alone for a time; during which Germany, thus assured against land attack, was better able to devote much money to the fleet, as the protector of her growing commerce. The results have been a projected huge German navy, and a German altercation with France relative to Moroccan affairs; incidents which have aroused Great Britain to a sense of naval danger, and have propelled her to the understandings—whatever they amount to—with France and Russia, which we now know as the Triple _Entente_. In short, Great Britain has abandoned the isolation of twenty years ago, stands joined to the Dual Alliance, and it becomes a Triple _Entente_. To the United States this means that Great Britain, once our chief opponent in matters covered by the Monroe Doctrine, but later by the logic of events drawn to recede from that opposition, so that she practically backed us against Europe in 1898, and subsequently conceded the Panama arrangement known as the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, cannot at present count for as much as she did in naval questions throughout the world. It means to the United States and to Japan that Great Britain has too much at stake at home to side with the one or the other, granting she so wished, except as bound by treaty, which implies reciprocal obligations. Between her and Japan such specific obligations exist. They do not in the case of the United States; and the question whether the two countries are disposed to support one another, and, if so, to what extent, or what the attitude of Great Britain would be in case of difficulty between Japan and the United States, are questions directly affecting naval strategy.[116]