A situation which was made bad by imperial rivalries and national antagonisms was made intolerable by militarism. During the year 1913–1914, when the diplomatists were working for peace, preparations were being made for war. In the month of August, 1913, while conversations were being held in Berlin to reconcile French and German interests in the Near East, General Joffre was on his way to Russia to confer with the Tsar’s general staff regarding the reorganization of the Russian army. In October of the same year, while tripartite negotiations were being conducted by England, Turkey, and Germany regarding Mesopotamia, General Liman von Sanders was despatched to Constantinople by the Kaiser as head of a German military mission to rebuild the Ottoman army and improve the Ottoman system of defence. Considerations of military strategy were vitiating the efforts of conciliatory diplomacy. The mission of Liman von Sanders created a crisis at Constantinople. The Russian, French, and British ambassadors protested against such an obvious menace to the interests of the Entente. Russia, in particular, objected to the announced intention of the German general to strengthen the defences of the Straits. All three of the Powers expressed opposition to the further proposal that Field Marshal von Sanders be placed in command of the First Army Corps, with headquarters at Constantinople. The Ottoman Government replied that it meant no offence to England or France, but that it could not allow its military policy to be determined by Russia. It called attention to the fact that the improvement of the navy was in the hands of a British mission and that the reorganization of the gendarmerie was going on under the direction of a French general. German officers were being asked to perform similar services for the army because the great majority of Turkish officers had completed their training in Germany, and the rest, since the days of General von der Goltz Pasha, had been educated and experienced in German methods. To change from German to French or British technique appeared to the Ottoman Minister of War an extremely inadvisable procedure.[38] Although the storm over Liman von Sanders cleared by February, 1914, it left behind it certain permanent effects. It strengthened German influence at Constantinople, indirectly because of the increased Turkish hostility to Russia and suspicion of France and England, directly because of the presence of hundreds of German staff and regimental officers who used every opportunity to increase German prestige in the army and the civil services. The German ambassador at the Sublime Porte, Baron von Wangenheim, readily capitalized this prestige in the interest of German diplomacy. A formal Turco-German alliance was rapidly passing from the realm of the possible to the realm of the probable.