Page:Anglo-American relations during the Spanish-American war (IA abz5883.0001.001.umich.edu).pdf/35

Rh intervention in behalf of the papacy. In 1882, the friendly overtures of Bismarck, together with the French imperial policy, had driven Italy into the German alliance. Just how strong this alliance was when it was renewed in 1887 it is difficult to say. Soon after 1890, however, it began to be evident that Italy was not wholly comfortable in her European alliance. She had begun to transfer her fear from France to Austria, her natural enemy in the Adriatic, and her confidence from Germany to Great Britain.

Great Britain, in the meantime, stood as she had been since the Crimean War, alone in her "splendid isolation." In 1895, the Conservative party, led by the Marquis of Salisbury and supported by Joseph Chamberlain, came into power with a new policy of colonial expansion and imperial solidarity. This policy, if adopted, would serve to destroy the existing balance of power as well as Great Britain's scheme of isolation. A program of aggressive colonial expansion would bring her immediately into direct conflict with the dominating member of each of the European alliances. Great Britain would thus be forced to prepare to meet the possibility of a combined alliance of the two groups of powers or else to forsake the policy of expansion as advocated by the Salisbury administration. The latter neither political party was willing to do for, strange to say, while the Conservative party had initiated the new policy, the Liberal party was fully committed to it; and, backed by a strong newspaper sentiment, and a powerful minority in the House of Commons, censured severely what they considered the dilatory or feeble policy of the Conservatives.