Page:The Myth of a Guilty Nation.djvu/99

 pacific overture more than half-way, and themselves initiated all that could be thought of. "There is no doubt," wrote Baron Beyens from Berlin, "that the Emperor, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (von Kiderlen-Wächter) are passionately pacifists." Baron Beyens again says, 28 June, 1912, "The Emperor is persistent and has not given up hopes of winning back English sympathies, just as he has succeeded up to a certain point in obtaining the confidence of the Tsar, by the force of his personal attractions." Those who believe in the extraordinary notion of an unprepared and unsuspecting Europe, should read the diplomatic history of the year 1912, when all the chief officeholders in England and on the Continent were struggling like men caught in a quicksand, or like flies on fly-paper, to avert, or if they could not avert, to defer the inevitable war.

In one country, however, the jingo nationalist and militarist party came on top; and that country was France. M. Caillaux was succeeded by Raymond Poincaré; and in January, 1913, Poincaré became President of the Republic. Up to 1912, the people of France were increasingly indisposed to war and were developing a considerable impatience with militarism, and the

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