at in the year succeeding
the Moroccan crisis a serious attempt was made to improve Anglo-German
relations, and there is no reason to doubt that on both sides there was
a genuine desire for an understanding. How that understanding failed has
already been indicated.[8] But even that failure did not ruin the relations
between the two Powers. In the Balkan crisis, as we have seen and as is
admitted on both sides, England and Germany worked together for peace. And
the fact that a European conflagration was then avoided, in spite of the
tension between Russia and Austria, is a strong proof that the efforts of
Sir Edward Grey were sincerely and effectively seconded by Germany.[9]

[Footnote 1: See "Morocco in Diplomacy," Chap. XVI. A dispatch written by
M. Leghait, the Belgian minister in Paris, on May 7, 1905, shows that
rumour was busy on the subject. The secret clauses of the Franco-Spanish
treaty were known to him, and these provided for an eventual partition of
Morocco between France and Spain. He doubted whether there were secret
clauses in the Anglo-French treaty--"but it is supposed that there is a
certain tacit understanding by which England would leave France sufficient
liberty of action in Morocco under the reserve of the secret clauses of the
Franco-Spanish arrangement, clauses if not imposed yet at least strongly
supported by the London Cabinet."

We know, of course, now, that the arrangement for the partition was
actually embodied in secret clauses in the Anglo-French treaty.]

[Footnote 2: According to M. Yves Guyot, when the Kaiser was actually on
his way to Tangier, he telegraphed from Lisbon to Prince Buelow abandoning
the project. Prince Buelow telegraphed back insisting, and the Kaiser
yielded.]

[Footnote 3: See Bourdon, "L'Enigme Allemande," Chap. II. This account, by
a Frenchman, will not be suspected of anti-French or pro-German bias, and
it is based on French official records.]

[Footnote 4: "L'Allemagne avant la guerre," p. 216.]

[Footnote 5: "L'Allemagne avant la guerre," p. 235.]

[Footnote 6: See above, p. 63.]

[Footnote 7: This view is reaffirmed by Baron Beyens in "L'Allemagne avant
la guerre," p. 29.]

[Footnote 8: See above, p. 79.]

[Footnote 9: Above, p. 111.]

16. _The Last Years_.

We have reached, then, the year 1913, and the end of the Balkan wars,
without discovering in German policy any clear signs of a determination
to produce a European war. We have found all th