ween us! What an idea! Why, it would mean a
European war, something monstrous, something which would surpass in horror
anything the world has ever seen! My dear sir, only madmen could desire or
conceive such a calamity! It must be avoided at all costs." "What counts
above all here is commercial interest. All who live by it are, here as
elsewhere, almost too pacific." "Under the economic conditions prevailing
in Germany, the most glorious victory she can aspire to--it is a soldier
who says it--is peace!"

The impression thus gathered from M. Bourdon's observations is confirmed
at every point by those of Baron Beyens, who went to Berlin as Belgian
minister after the crisis of Agadir.[2] Of the world of business he says:--

All these gentlemen appeared to be convinced partisans of peace....
According to them, the tranquillity of Europe had not been for a moment
seriously menaced during the crisis of Agadir.... Industrial Germany
required to live on good terms with France. Peace was necessary to
business, and German finance in particular had every interest in the
maintenance of its profitable relations with French finance.[3] At the
end of a few months I had the impression that these pacifists personified
then--in 1912--the most common, the most widely spread, though the least
noisy, opinion, the opinion of the majority, understanding by the
majority, not that of the governing classes but that of the nation
as a whole (p. 172).

The mass of the people, Beyens held, loved peace, and dreaded war. That was
the case, not only with all the common people, but also with the managers
and owners of businesses and the wholesale and retail merchants. Even in
Berlin society and among the ancient German nobility there were to be found
sincere pacifists. On the other hand, there was certainly a bellicose
minority. It was composed largely of soldiers, both active and retired;
the latter especially looking with envy and disgust on the increasing
prosperity of the commercial classes, and holding that a "blood-letting
would be wholesome to purge and regenerate the social body"--a view not
confined to Germany, and one which has received classical expression in
Tennyson's "Maud." To this movement belonged also the high officials, the
Conservative parties, patriots and journalists, and of course the armament
firms, deliberate fomenters of war in Germany, as everywhere else, in order
to put money into their pockets. To the