While Beaconsfield had opposed the first Afghan war, he readily changed his views when he came into power and began the second war in 1878 on the avowed ground that the Ameer had refused to receive a British mission. But with a sudden change of tactics, at a dinner at the Mansion House on November 9, Lord Beaconsfield solemnly announced that the war had been made because the frontier of India was “a haphazard and not a scientific one.” Yet a little before, when condemning the first Afghan war, he had described the frontiers of India as “a perfect barrier.” He did not give to any organization of public opinion a chance to influence him in this matter, or even to be heard. On December 9, Lord Derby said in the House of Lords: “We are discussing, and we know we are discussing, an issue upon which we have no real or practical influence.” V TRIPLE ALLIANCE DIPLOMACY AND MOROCCO Toward the end of the nineteenth century the dominating development in the diplomacy of Europe was the actual formation of the two great alliances--the Triple Alliance created by Bismarck, and the Russo-French Alliance which had come into being in 1896 as a counterpoise to the former. The treaties upon which these alliances rested were made secretly; they were part of an authoritative policy based on the theory of balance of power. The texts of the Triple Alliance Treaty were not published until after the beginning of the Great War. The so-called Counter-Insurance Treaty with Russia by which Bismarck attempted to stabilize the situation and isolate France through a mutual neutrality agreement between Russia, Austria and Germany, was one of the most characteristic examples of complicated methods followed by the old diplomacy; it was, of course, also kept secret. When after Bismarck’s retirement the German Government did not renew this secret treaty, it made possible a fundamental change in the grouping of powers with the result that Russia, after a very short interval, identified herself with France in the Dual Alliance.