Such is the inveterate suspicion, the melancholy distrust, put upon
English diplomacy by these foreign and neutral observers who could see
so plainly what would befall their own country in the event of a
European war. Such too, was the responsibility which these observers
regularly imputed to the British Foreign Office--the British Foreign
Office which was so soon to fix upon the neutrality of Belgium as a
_casus belli_ and pour out streams of propaganda about the sanctity of
treaties and the rights of small nations! Every one of these observers
exhibits this suspicion and distrust. In March, 1906, when Edward VII
visited Paris and invited the discredited ex-Minister Delcassé to
breakfast, the Belgian Minister at Paris wrote:
It looks as though the king wished to demonstrate that the policy
which called forth Germany's active intervention [over Morocco] has
nevertheless remained unchanged.... In French circles it is not
over well received; Frenchmen feeling that they are being dragged
against their will in the orbit of English policy, a policy whose
consequences they dread, and which they generally condemned by
throwing over M. Delcassé. In short, people fear that this is a
sign that England wants so to envenom the situation that war will
become inevitable.
On 10 February, 1907, when the English King and Queen visited Paris, he
says: "One can not conceal from oneself that these tactics, though their
ostensible object is to prevent war, are likely to arouse great
dissatisfaction in Berlin and to stir up a desire to risk anything that
may enable Germany to burst the ring which England's policy is
tightening around her." On 28 March, 1907, the Belgian _chargé
d'affaires_ in London speaks of "English diplomacy, whose whole effort
is directed to the isolation of Germany." On the same date, by a curious
coincidence, the Minister at Berlin, in the course of a blistering
arraignment of French policy in Morocco, says: "But at the bottom of
every settlement that has been made, or is going to be made, there lurks
always that hatred of Germany.... It is a sequence of the campaign very
cleverly conducted with the object of isolating Germany.... The English
press is carrying on its campaign of calumny more implacably than ever.
It sees the finger of Germany in everything that goes contrary to
English wishes." On 18 April, 1907, Baron Greindl says of the King of
England's visit to the King of Spain that, like the alliances with Japan
and France and the negotiations with Russia, it is "one of the moves in
the campaign to isolate Germany that is being personally directed with
as much perseverance as success by His Majesty King Edward VII." In the
same dispatch he remarks: "There is some right to regard with suspicion
this eagerness to unite, for a so-called defensive object, Powers who
are menaced by nobody. At Berlin they can not forget that offer of
100,000 men made by the King of England to M. Delcassé."
On 24 May, 1907, the Minister at London reported that "it is plain that
official England is pursuing a policy that is covertly hostile, and
tending to result in the isolation of Germany, and that King Edward has
not been above putting his personal influence at the service of this
cause." On 19 June, 1907, Count de Lalaing again writes from London of
the Anglo-Franco-Spanish agreement concerning the _status quo_ in the
Mediterranean region, that "it is, however, difficult to imagine that
Germany will not regard it as a further step in England's policy, which
is determined, by every sort of means, to isolate the German Empire."
Perusal of these documents from beginning to end will show nothing to
offset against the view of English diplomacy exhibited in the foregoing
quotations; nothing to modify or qualify that view in any way. Baron
Greindl, however, speaks highly of the British Ambassador at Berlin, Sir
F. Lascelles, and praises his personal and unsupported attempt to
establish friendly relations between England and Germany. Of this he
says: "I have been a witness for the last twelve years of the efforts he
has made to accomplish it. And yet, possessing as he justly does the
absolute confidence of the Emperor and the German Government, and
eminently gifted with the qualities of a statesman, he has nevertheless
not succeeded very well so far." The next year, 1908, when Sir F.
Lascelles was forced to resign his post, Baron Greindl does not hesitate
to say that "the zeal with which he has worked to dispel
misunderstandings that he thought absurd and highly mischievous for both
countries, does not fall in with the political views of his sovereign."