When the international crisis came to a head suddenly in July, 1911, through the disconcerting action of the German Government in sending a war vessel to Agadir, the public was totally taken by surprise and was absolutely in the dark as to the issues and interests involved as well as to the commitments which had been made by the British and French foreign offices. The text of the secret treaty between France and Spain had, however, now been secured by the Paris papers _Le Temps_ and _Le Matin_. This revelation led to party attacks on secret diplomacy in the British House of Commons and in the French Parliament. Baron d’Estournelles de Constant, in February, 1912, said: ... “Why was the French Parliament told only half the truth when it was asked to pass its opinion upon our arrangement with England? Why was it allowed to suspect that this arrangement had as its complement and corrective some secret clauses and other secret treaties? It is this, it is this double game towards Parliament and towards the world which becomes morally an abuse of trust.... Now the whole effort of the arrangement of 1904 appears to-day in its truth and in its vanity. It was a treaty of friendship with England recognizing the freedom of our political action in Morocco and also proclaiming our will to respect the integrity of that country; that was what the public knew and approved. But the public was ignorant that at the same time, by other Treaties and by contradictory clauses hidden from it, the partition of Morocco between Spain and France was prepared, of that Morocco of which we guaranteed the integrity.” In the House of Commons, Mr. John Dillon charged that “the Foreign Office policy has become during the last ten years progressively more secret every year. For ten years the foreign policy of this country has been conducted behind an elaborate screen of secrecy.” VI ENTENTE DIPLOMACY As the commitments of the British Government gradually became more and more known the question arose as to how deeply and extensively Great Britain had been involved in continental affairs. Lord Rosebery, who was uninformed, with the rest of Parliament and the public, as to the actual details, said in a speech at Glasgow in January, 1912: “This we do know about our foreign policy, that, for good or for evil, we are now embraced in the midst of the Continental system. That I regard as perhaps the gravest fact in the later portion of my life. We are, for good or for evil, involved in a Continental system, the merits of which I do not pretend to judge, because I do not know enough about it, but which, at any rate, may at any time bring us into conflict with armies numbering millions, and our own forces would hardly be counted in such a war as they stand at present.”