This tendency in a nation to look about for justification and a righteous plea, when it is preparing to possess itself of property belonging to its neighbours, is for the most part a subconscious process, not only {114} among the common people, but also among the leaders themselves. It resembles the instinct among hens which produces in them an appetite for lime when the season has come to begin laying. It was through some natural impulse of this sort, and not through mere cynicism, hypocrisy, or cool calculation, that German publicists discovered all the grievances which have been already touched upon. For even if the possession of these grievances did not altogether give the would-be aggressors right up to the point of righteousness, it certainly put their neighbours in the wrong, and branded the French dove and the British lamb with turpitude in the eyes of the German people. The grievances against France were, that although she had been vanquished in 1870, although her population had actually decreased since that date, and although therefore she had neither the right to nor any need for expansion, she had nevertheless expanded in Africa as well as in the East, to a far greater extent than Germany herself, the victorious power, whose own population had meanwhile been increasing by leaps and bounds. [Sidenote: GRIEVANCES AGAINST ENGLAND] The grievances against Britain were that she was supposed to have made war upon German trade, to have prevented her young rival from acquiring colonies, and to have intrigued to surround the Teuton peoples with a ring of foes. Britain had helped France to occupy and hold her new territories. Britain had been mainly responsible for the diplomatic defeat of Germany at Algeciras in 1905 and again over Agadir in 1911. Moreover when Germany, during the South African war, had attempted, in the interests of international morality, to combine the nations against us, we had foiled her high-minded {115} and unselfish endeavours. When at an earlier date she had sought, by the seizure of Kiao-Chau and by a vigorous concentration, to oust British influence and trade from their position of predominance in China, we had countered her efforts by the occupation of Wei-hai-wei and the Japanese alliance.