What was back of this situation? Germany was already dominant in Continental Europe. It had compelled Russia to submit when Austria in 1908 annexed the Slav states of Bosnia and Herzegovina and defied Servia to interfere or its proud patron at St. Petersburg to prevent the humiliation; it had brought France to her knees over the Morocco incident and the Delcasse resignation, and would have done so again in 1911 if Great Britain had not ranged herself behind the French republic; it held the issues of peace and war between the great Powers during the Balkan struggles of 1912 and 1913 and prevented Servia from winning its legitimate fruits of victory or Montenegro from holding what it had won; it had watched with delight the defeat of unorganized Russia at the hands of Japan and saw what its writers described as a decadent British Empire holding in feeble hands a quarter of the earth in fee, with revolt coming in Ireland, rebellion seething in India, dissatisfaction in South Africa, separation upon the horizon in Canada and Australia. Here lay the secret of German naval policy, of German hopes that Britain would remain out of the inevitable struggle with France and Russia, of German ambitions for a world-empire. GERMAN AMBITIONS The German nation had not up to the passing of Bismarck been the enemy of the British people and until its belated entrance upon the field of world politics and expansion the people had not even been rivals. In the long series of European wars between 1688 and 1815, the German states were allies and friends of England. After that, Prussia, and then the German Empire, became gradually a great national force in the world and its spirit of unity, pride of power, energy in trade, skill and success in industry, vigor of development in tariffs, progress in military power and naval construction were, from the standpoint of its own people, altogether admirable. Following the Franco-Prussian War it had steadily attained a position of European supremacy. Then came the increase of population and trade, the desire for colonies, the restriction of emigration to foreign countries.