he did so plot and prepare for an attack that should come from him,
anticipating and overwhelming any resistance, is now, even in the
documents he has himself published, a fact of common sense. Suppose a
man sells all his lands except a small yard containing a well; suppose
in the division of the effects of an old friend he particularly asks for
his razors; suppose when a corded trunk is sent him he sends back the
trunk, but keeps the cord. And then suppose we hear that a rival of his
has been lassoed with a rope, his throat then cut, apparently with a
razor, and his body hidden in a well, we do not call in Sherlock Holmes
to project a preliminary suspicion about the guilty party. In the
discussions held by the Prussian Government with Lord Haldane and Sir
Edward Grey we can now see quite as plainly the meaning of the things
that were granted and the things that were withheld, the things that
would have satisfied the Prussian plotter and the things that did not
satisfy him. The German Chancellor refused an English promise not to be
aggressive and asked instead for an English promise to be neutral. There
is no meaning in the distinction, except in the mind of an aggressor.
Germany proposed a pacific arrangement which forbade England to form a
fighting alliance with France, but permitted Germany to retain her old
fighting alliance with Austria. When the hour of war came she used
Austria, used the old fighting alliance and tried to use the new idea of
English neutrality. That is to say, she used the rope, the razor, and
the well.

But it was either by accident or by individual diplomatic skill that
England at the end of the three years even had her own hands free to
help in frustrating the German plot. The mass of the English people had
no notion of such a plot; and indeed regarded the occasional suggestion
of it as absurd. Nor did even the people who knew best know very much
better. Thanks and even apologies are doubtless due to those who in the
deepest lull of our sleeping partnership with Prussia saw her not as a
partner but a potential enemy; such men as Mr. Blatchford, Mr. Bart
Kennedy, or the late Emil Reich. But there is a distinction to be made.
Few even of these, with the admirable and indeed almost magical
exception of Dr. Sarolea, saw Germany as she was; occupied mainly with
Europe and only incidentally with England; indeed, in the first stages,
not occupied with England at all. Even the Anti-Germans were too
i