Later on, when people had time to concentrate their minds on such matters, there was a thrill of post-dated anxiety--a perturbation and disapproval; criticism upon various points; a transference of Mr. McKenna from the Admiralty to the Home Office, and of Mr. Churchill from the Home Office to the Admiralty. Indignant anti-militarists, supporters for the most part of the Government, allowed themselves to be mysteriously reduced to silence. Business men, who had been shocked when they learned the truth, suffered themselves to be persuaded that even the truth must be taken with a pinch of salt. There was, in fact, a sort of general agreement that it was better to leave the summer embers undisturbed, lest a greater conflagration {287} might ensue. The attitude of the orthodox politician was that of a nervous person who, hearing, as he imagines, a burglar in his bedroom, feels happier and safer when he shuts his eyes and pulls the blankets over his head. [Sidenote: THE FIFTH WARNING] A few months later, at the beginning of the following year (1912), the _fifth_ warning of the series was delivered. It differed from its predecessors inasmuch as it was addressed to the ears of the British Government alone. Neither the Opposition nor the country heard anything of it until more than two years later--until the battles of Alsace, of Charleroi, and of Mons had been lost--until the battle of the Marne had been won--until the British Army was moving north to take up a position in Flanders. Then we learned that, when Lord Haldane had visited Berlin in the month of February 1912, he had done so at the special request of the Kaiser, in order to consider how Anglo-German misunderstandings might be removed. Lord Haldane would have acted more wisely had he stopped his journey _en route_, and never entered Berlin at all. For, two days before the date appointed for his visit, proposals for large increases of the German Army and Navy were laid before the Reichstag. His mission was to abate competition in armaments, and here was an encouraging beginning! Was it contempt, or insolence, or a design to overawe the supposed timidity of the emissary; or was it merely a blundering effort to steal a march in the negotiations by facing the ambassador on his arrival with a _fait accompli_? Possibly it was a combination of all these; but at any rate it was {288} exceedingly clumsy, and no less significant than clumsy. As to the mission--Germany was willing in a vague way to 'retard'--whatever that may mean--though not to abandon, or reduce, her naval programme, providing the British Government would agree to remain neutral in any war which Germany might choose to wage. France might be crushed and Belgium annexed; but in either event England must stand aside and wait her turn. On no other terms would the Kaiser consent to a _rapprochement_ with this country, or allow the blessed words 'retardation of the naval programme' to be uttered by official lips.