Thus a minister, to whom national intrigue and duplicity were essentially foreign, who was trusted by his country and who wanted peace, was brought by the methods of secret diplomacy into a position where he had actually incurred the moral obligation to assist another country without having the power for peace which the ability to avow that relationship openly, to take the responsibility, and to confront Germany therewith, would have given him. As early as November, 1911, Lord Lansdowne, one of the founders of the Entente, in speaking of the secret agreement of 1904 concerning Morocco, which had then just become known to the public, had admitted that in such a case the promise of purely diplomatic support might easily bring on the obligation to assist in other ways; that an entente cordiale creates close relationships between two countries; and that, should one of them get into difficulties without its guilt, it would expect to receive support. The moral responsibilities in which the Foreign Minister had involved the British Government were not simple, nor did they exist against France alone. Because of the Franco-Russian alliance the relationship established between Great Britain and France virtually involved sharing in the defense of France against the consequences of her alliance with Russia, as the subsequent events showed; any serious situation arising in the Balkans and affecting Russian interests would thereafter involve France, and through her, Great Britain. Accordingly, the effect of this policy was to make the peace of Great Britain depend upon, and to involve it with, the complex struggle for influence in the Balkans. After Sir Edward Grey’s speech of August 3rd, Mr. T. Edmund Harvey, M.P., said: “I am convinced that this war for the great masses of the countries of Europe is no peoples’ war. It is a war that has been made by men in high places, by diplomatists working in secret, by bureaucrats out of touch with the people, by men who are a remnant of an older evil civilization.”