If Germany had waited but three days after that declaration by her ally, before delivering her ultimatum to Russia, either the war would have been avoided altogether, or Russia would have had to face the world as the aggressor, with all the forces of what Bismarck termed "imponderabilia" against her. And it would be an insult to Germany's efficiency to question that she could have found measures short of rushing into war, to meet and offset for another few days the menace of Russian mobilization--apart from the fact that there is some reason to suspect that this Russian mobilization on the German frontier was deliberately provoked by certain Machiavellian manoeuvres in Berlin. On the 30th and 31st of July, respectively, Sir Edward Grey telegraphed as follows to the English ambassador in Berlin for transmission to the Imperial Chancellor: "... You should speak to the Chancellor in the above sense, and add most earnestly that one way of maintaining good relations with England and Germany is that they should continue to work together to preserve the peace of Europe. If we succeed in this object, the mutual relations of Germany and England will, I believe, be _ipso facto_ improved and strengthened. For that object his Majesty's Government will work in that way with all sincerity and good will.... "And I will say this: If the peace of Europe can be preserved, and the present crisis safely passed, my _own endeavour will be to promote some arrangement to which Germany could be a party, by which she could be assured that no aggressive or hostile policy would be pursued against her or her allies by France, Russia and ourselves, jointly or separately_. I have desired this and worked for it, as far as I could, through the last Balkan crisis and, Germany having a corresponding object, our relations sensibly improved. The idea has hitherto been too Utopian to form the subject of definite proposals, _but if this present crisis_, so much more acute than any that Europe has gone through for generations, _be safely passed, I am hopeful that the relief and reaction which will follow may make possible some more definite rapprochement between the Powers than has been possible hitherto_.... "_I said to the German Ambassador this morning that #if Germany could get any reasonable proposal put forward which made it clear that Germany and Austria were striving to preserve European peace, and that Russia and France would be unreasonable if they rejected it, I would support it at St. Petersburg and Paris, and go to the length of saying that if Russia and France would not accept it, his Majesty's Government would have nothing more to do with the consequences#_; otherwise, I told the German Ambassador that if France became involved we should be drawn in."