An undertaking of this tenor went beyond those assurances of non-aggressive intent which Lord Haldane, on behalf of his own Government, was fully prepared to give. We would not be a party to any unprovoked attack on Germany--was not that sufficient? It was plainly insufficient. It was made clear that Germany desired a free hand to establish herself in a position of supremacy astride of Europe. So Lord Haldane returned profitless from his wayfaring, and the British Government was at its wits' end how to placate the implacable. The way they chose was well-doing, in which they wearied themselves perhaps overmuch, especially during the Balkan negotiations. For Germany did not want war at that time, for the reasons which have been given already. And so, rather surlily, and with the air of one who was humouring a crank--a pusillanimous people whose fixed idea was pacifism--she consented that we should put ourselves to vast trouble to keep the peace for her benefit. If {289} war had to come in the end, it had much better have come then--so far as we were concerned--seeing that the combined balance of naval and military power was less unfavourable to the Triple Entente at the beginning of 1913 than it was some fifteen months later.... This was all the notice we took of the fifth warning. We earned no gratitude by our activities, nor added in any way thereby to our own safety. [Sidenote: THE HALDANE MISSION] The Haldane mission is a puzzle from first to last. The Kaiser had asked that he should be sent.... For what purpose? ... Apparently in order to discuss the foreign policy of England and Germany. But surely the Kaiser should have been told that we kept an Ambassador at Berlin for this very purpose; an able man, habituated to stand in the strong sunlight of the imperial presence without losing his head; but, above all, qualified to converse on such matters (seeing that they lay within his own province) far better than the most profound jurist in Christendom. Or if our Ambassador at Berlin could not say what was required, the German Ambassador in London might easily have paid a visit to Downing Street; or the Foreign Ministers of the two countries might have arranged a meeting; or even the British Premier and the German Chancellor might have contrived to come together. Any of these ways would have been more natural, more proper, more likely (one would think) to lead to business, than the way which was followed. One guesses that the desire of the Kaiser that Lord Haldane should be sent, was met half-way by the desire of Lord Haldane to go forth; that there was some temperamental affinity between these {290} two pre-eminent characters--some attraction of opposites, like that of the python and the rabbit.