Page:Diplomacy and the War (Andrassy 1921).djvu/86

 of Europe would have been secured for sixty years."

The passionate anti-German propaganda which had been carried on for many years was created by Lord Northcliffe, than whom there is no statesman more responsible for the outbreak of the war. The revelations which came to light as a consequence of party quarrels, and the accusations made at the time of the Morocco Crisis in 1911, caused the impression among public opinion in Germany that England wanted to catch the German fleet unawares and to destroy it.

Chamberlain's speech and Bülow's answer at the time of the Boer War in connection with military atrocities, together with the threat made by the Secretary for War, Lee, that the British Fleet could annihilate the enemy squadrons before the public was aware that war had been declared, all tended to incite the two nations against each other. These statements were, however, rather the result of distrust of the one nation for the other, and the attempt to express the feeling of the country rather than the expression of belligerent intentions. The fault, however, does not lie on one side only. Germany also supplied ample material for suspicion. Even the words of the Kaiser, who was peaceful and Anglophile at first, did much towards the creation of British antipathy. The Kaiser knew how to express his thoughts with so much pregnant force and in such winged words, that everything he said was remembered, and often appeared to disclose intentions which the Kaiser never cherished.