and the interpolation of
a few clumsy bids for her favour amid the torrent of insults against
her which filled the German press, were of no avail; especially as she
had to look on at the unceasing petty persecution practised in the lost
provinces of Alsace-Lorraine. Russia had been alienated by the first
evidences of German designs in the Balkans, and driven into a close
alliance with France. Britain, hitherto obstinately friendly to
Germany, began to be perturbed by the growing German programmes of
naval construction from 1900 onwards, by the absolute refusal of
Germany to consider any proposal for mutual disarmament or retardation
of construction, and above all by the repeated assertions of the head
of the German state that Germany aspired to naval supremacy, that her
future was on the sea, that the trident must be in her hands. Should
the trident fall into any but British hands, the existence of the
British Empire, and the very livelihood of the British homeland, would
rest at the mercy of him who wielded it. So, quite inevitably, the
three threatened empires drew together and reconciled their differences
in the Franco-British agreement of 1904 and the Russo-British agreement
of 1907.

These agreements dealt wholly with extra-European questions, and
therefore deserve some analysis. In the Franco-British agreement the
main feature was that while France withdrew her opposition to the
British position in Egypt, Britain on her side recognised the paramount
political interest of France in Morocco. It was the agreement about
Morocco which counted for most; because it was the beginning of a
controversy which lasted for seven years, which was twice used by
Germany as a means for testing, and endeavouring to break, the
friendship of her rivals, and which twice brought Europe to the verge
of war.

Morocco is a part of that single region of mountainous North Africa of
which France already controlled the remainder, Tunis and Algeria.
Peoples of the same type inhabited the whole region, but while in Tunis
and Algeria they were being brought under the influence of law and
order, in Morocco they remained in anarchy. Only a conventional line
divided Morocco from Algeria, and the anarchy among the tribesmen on
one side of the line inevitably had an unhappy effect upon the people
on the other side of the line. More than once France had been
compelled, for the sake of Algeria, to intervene in Morocco. It is
impossible to exaggerate