Foreign politics everywhere for the last three or four years have been full of incident, outcry, and bloodshed. The state of things, indeed, prevailing in the world for some time past is extraordinary. A visitant from another planet would imagine that normal peace and abnormal war had changed places, and that civilized mankind now regard peace as an interlude of war, not war as an interlude of peace. He would be wrong, of course, but the race in armament, which threatens to leave the nations taking part in it financially breathless and exhausted, might easily lead him astray. On some of the situations with which these politics are concerned we may briefly touch. For the last three or four years the dominant note in the music of what is called the European Concert, taking Europe for the moment to include Great Britain, has been the state of Anglo-German relations. There have been times, as has been seen, when public feeling in both England and Germany was strongly antagonized, but all through the period there has been evident a desire on the part of both Governments to adopt a mutually conciliatory attitude, and if the war in the Balkans does not lead to a general international conflagration, which at present appears improbable, the two countries may arrive at a permanent understanding. There was, and not so very long ago, a similar state of tension, prolonged for many years, between England and France. That tension not only ceased, but was converted into political friendship by the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904. Parallel with this tension between England and France was the tension between England and Russia, owing to the latter's advance towards England's Indian possessions. The latter state of things ended with the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907, and it should engender satisfaction and hope, therefore, to those who now apprehend a war between England and Germany to note that neither of the tensions referred to, though both were long and bitter, developed into war. The tension between England and Germany of late years has been tightened rather than relaxed by ministerial speeches as well as by newspaper polemics in both countries. One of the most disturbing of the former was the speech delivered by Mr. Lloyd George at the Mansion House on July 21, 1911. Doubtless with the approval of the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George said: