“ ... The lecturer attached enormous importance to the Pan-German movement, which he regarded as the decisive factor in the situation, and he pointed out that the propaganda which had gone on in Germany and in Austria was part of a great policy to extend the boundaries of the German State and dominate middle and south-eastern Europe. The _rapport personnel_ established in recent years between Berlin and Vienna pointed, he said, to the conclusion that Germany and Austria were working hand in hand. In the recent Balkan crisis he described Aehrenthal as playing a _partie de poker_, in which his bluff had been crowned with success. The off-set to the Pan-German movement was to be found in the Triple Entente between England, France and Russia, and it followed from a consideration of European politics that the questions confronting England with regard to the supremacy of the sea were intimately bound up with the question which concerned the land powers of Europe. In particular, the speaker thought that the Pan-German aspirations would be effectually combatted by the growing social and political development of the various minor Slav peoples in the south-east of Europe. The development of these peoples was a thing which it was with the interests of England, France and Russia to encourage to the utmost.” My Scottish hearers gave me a very kind reception, of which I have preserved a lively recollection. But truth compels me to declare that I had the impression that the great majority of them did not believe me. I strongly suspect that they then saw in me simply a Frenchman, who, moved by the spirit of revenge, tried above all to stir up the British public against Germany. The impression did not discourage me any more than many similar instances of want of success. In 1911 the Central Asian Society did me the honour of inviting me to express my views in London (22nd March) on the Bagdad railway. I used this fresh opportunity to expound a method of Franco-English co-operation which seemed to me necessary to parry the dangers of the near future. “Such is,” I then said, “broadly speaking, the affair of Bagdad. The most moderate conclusion which, in my judgment, inevitably follows is that from beginning to end the logical and methodical spirit of Germany has got the better of the French, English, and Russian interests, which have been compromised by our slowness to grasp the importance of the problem confronting us, and by the lamentable want of cohesion between the diplomacies of the three countries. “The lesson apparently to be drawn from these considerations is, that for the future we ought no longer to be satisfied with a hand-to-mouth policy and with seeking solutions only when the difficulties take an acute form. “If we wish to serve and defend our interests effectually, we must, as Talleyrand said, keep the future in mind, and learn something of that German method of which the good results are incontestable.