Page:Diplomacy revealed.djvu/14

xiv. political department in the Belgian Foreign Office (1909), chief of the King's private Cabinet, and Minister attached to the Court (1910). The despatches may be said to cover two periods: the period of the protracted struggle over Morocco which, in its active and latent stages, lasted from the autumn of 1904 to the conclusion of the Franco-German Convention in November, 1911: and the period which began with the attempts to improve Anglo-German relations, dating from the conclusion of that Convention to the murder of the Austrian heir-apparent through the agency of the Serbian "Black Hand" Society, in June, 1914. For the past nine years — 1911 to the present time — I have been pointing out that this struggle over the disposal or Morocco was an epoch-making event in modern history, not because of its intrinsic importance, but because of the consequences involved in it and the effects to which it gave rise. My view is amply corroborated in these despatches. Long before they saw the light I endeavoured, in a series of articles in the Nineteenth Century and After and in the Nation, and in many letters to the Daily News and other newspapers, and subsequently in a volume published two years before the war, to arouse my countrymen to the enormous significance of the Morocco dispute for Anglo-German relations and for the peace of the world. I wrote then without proofs, but suspecting that the attitude of the British Government towards the actions of France in Morocco was so extraordinary that it could only be explained by the existence of a secret understanding with France concealed from the British people and committing us to naval and military support of France. As France was bound to Russia by a political and military alliance, any secret commitments to France would involve us in contingent liabilities to Tsarist Russia, whose actions were ever irresponsible and incalculable, and whose imperialist ambitions were illimitable. This prospect filled me with deep concern, and in the years which immediately preceded the war I neglected no opportunity which presented itself of drawing public attention to the dangers of the situation arising out of a secret diplomacy which took no account of the vital