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Rh be feared, no friends. This had been well enough hitherto. But now "a new situation has arisen in the world"; the world was combining into great organisations, so that "we are liable at any moment to be confronted by a combination of great powers." He concluded that the time had definitely come for us to abandon our aloofness, and "we must not reject the idea of an alliance with the power whose interests are closest to our own." For the nonce, inaction and protests and queries; yet those words were pregnant with things to come.

As the years passed after 1898, the signs of the times accumulated about our head. In the first place, during this period, from 1892 to 1901 at any rate, the German Emperor steadily pursued a highly sagacious policy of conciliation with France. An ample and even embarrassing jet of international courtesies and diplomatic compliments was showered from Berlin upon Paris, "our chivalrous enemy, always so useful to the cause of civilisation," and upon "French soldiers, who fight with the courage of despair." Perhaps the climax was reached in 1900, when French and German troops co-operated in China.

Next, there was the outbreak of the South African War, on which occasion, in the words of Lord Rosebery, who expressed the opinion of our leading statesmen, our public realised "the hatred and ill-will" with which we were regarded "almost unanimously by the peoples of Europe."