It is quite incredible that Lord Haldane ever said anything of this kind; for he would have been four times over a traitor if he had--to France; to Belgium; to his own country; also to Germany whom he would thus have misled. It is also all but incredible that a single high official at Berlin ever understood him to have spoken in this sense. But this is what the high officials have assured their own countrymen and the whole of the neutral world that they did understand; and they have called piteously on mankind to witness, how false the British Government was to an honourable understanding, so soon as trouble arose in July last with regard to Servia. Such are some of the penalties we have paid for the luxury of indulging in amateur diplomacy. The German bureaucracy, however, always presses things too far. It is not a little like Fag in _The Rivals_--"whenever it draws on its invention for a good current lie, it always forges the endorsements as well as the bill." As a proof that the relations of the two countries from this time forward were of the best, inferences have been drawn industriously by the high officials at Berlin as to the meaning and extent of Anglo-German co-operation during the Balkan wars; as to agreements with regard to Africa already signed, but not published, in which Downing {294} Street had shown itself 'surprisingly accommodating'; as to other agreements with regard to the Baghdad Railway, the Mesopotamian oil-fields, the navigation of the Tigris, and access through Basra to the Persian Gulf. These agreements, the earnest of a new _entente_ between the Teuton nations--the United States subsequently to be welcomed in--are alleged to have been already concluded, signed and awaiting publication when war broke out.[9] Then trouble arises in Servia; a mere police business--nothing more--which might have been settled in a few days or at any rate weeks, if perfidious Albion had not seized the opportunity to work upon Muscovite suspicions, in order to provoke a world-war for which she had been scheming all the time! [Sidenote: THE SIXTH WARNING] The _sixth_ warning was the enormous German Army Bill and the accompanying war loan of 1913. By comparison, the five previous warnings were but ambiguous whispers. And yet this last reverberation had apparently no more effect upon the British Government than any of the rest. With all these numerous premonitions the puzzle is, how any government could have remained in doubt as to the will of Germany to wage war whenever {295} her power seemed adequate and the opportunity favourable for winning it. The favourite plea that the hearts of Mr. Asquith and his colleagues were stronger than their heads does not earn much respect. Knowing what we do of them in domestic politics, this excuse would seem to put the quality of their heads unduly low. The true explanation of their omissions must be sought elsewhere than in their intellects and affections.