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Rh powder magazine of European rivalries in order to buy off a rival to an occupation which we now find is impracticable!

And that decision, taken in 1904 in secret, has cursed our foreign policy ever since. When Germany discovered the facts she challenged the deal and demanded a new International Conference. All the old Franco-German animosities flamed into new life. These Belgian despatches contend that British diplomacy laboured to exacerbate them. Anglo-German relations became poisoned. The Unionist Cabinet prepared to support the deal by Force of arms-the deal of which the British people were in ignorance! The fleet was concentrated in the North Sea. The Dreadnought era was inaugurated. Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord, began his preparations for the "great task" of a "German war," which included the "Copenhagening" of the German Fleet. The Civil Lord of the Admiralty boasted that by the new disposition of the British fleet Britain could strike the first blow even before war was declared. Preparations for the despatch of an expeditionary force were talked of, and M. Deleassé, the French Foreign Minister, endeavoured to lead his colleagues along his own extreme path by boasting of positive assurances of British military and naval support. And all this arising out of secret deal giving to France what was not ours to give in order that France might agree that we should keep what was not ours to retain. Thus are the destinies of a people made the sport of fools in office, and its patriotism invoked in the most disreputatble and futile of political and strategic combinations.

The Unionist Government disappeared. The Liberals came in, declaiming of peace, retrenchment and reform. Hardly had they taken office when a section of the Cabinet determined, without the knowledge of the other section, let alone Parliament or the country, to base the country's entire foreign policy on the successful accomplishment of this deal, which continued to be unknown to the people. The military editor of a London newspaper, the French military attaché, the chairman of the Committee of Imperial Defence, flit hither and thither