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Rh boasts of it in his "Memoirs": "The- Germans are not building in this feverish haste to fight you! No! it's the daily dread they have of a second Copenhagen, which they know a Pitt or a Bismarck would execute on them. Cease building or I strike." Talk of Prussian, intolerance! There was panic on both sides. Yet Britain could display an avenue of 18 miles of ships before the admiring gaze of the Tsar of all the Russias (1909). For our secret co-partnership with France in war preparations, arising out of the secret Morocco deal, had been gradually drawing us within the tentacles of the Russian octopus, as was bound to be the case.

The secret deal was to be again threatened before its final accomplishment. The French opined that the time had come to give the coup de grâce to Moorish independence. Thirty thousand troops converged on Fez, the capital, hastening to the rescue of Europeans who did not require rescuing. They would leave, the assurance was given, directly the work of rescue had been completed.